Creative Idle mentioned in Bangladesh's New Age (online newspaper)

by Shegufta Behtarin

On February 3 and 4, British Council Dhaka arranged for a two day fashion journalism workshop that was the first ever initiative of its kind in Bangladesh, where fashion experts from UK came to give the fashion journalist here a whole new perspective of the fashion scenario around the world. This workshop was a part of a fashion exhibition that British Council is holding in collaboration with the National Museum in upholding the fashion trends and styles around the globe.

The fashion exhibition which began on January 28 at the National Museum was named Reconstruction in an effort to convey the links and bondages between fashions around the world. The exhibition highlights works of seven eminent British designers along with three Bangladeshi designers and some of National Museum's collection of textiles and weavings. The works of the designers show the linkage between the past techniques and ideas that tell tales of the present day fashion. The designers participating in the event are world famous designer such as Vivienne Westwood, Paul Smith, and Hussein Chalayan among many others. From the Bangladeshi panel, they had Ruby Ghaznavi, Monjulika Chakma and Emdad Haque.

As a part of the exhibition, British Council invited Rachael Oku the sub-editor of Six Magazine and blogger of Creative-Idle to conduct a workshop for the fashion journalists here. On the first day of the session Oku talked about the global trends of blogging and its pros and cons. She emphasized on the changes that blogging has brought to the fashion scene. She highlighted that by opting for blogging regarding fashion issues a lot important aspects can be addressed. She taught a few tools like Instagram, Bitly, Feedburner and other tools which could be useful for fashion journalism.

The idea of the session was to compare and contrast between the relatively new concept of blogging and old form of fashion reporting in magazines. On this Oku commented that the bloggers posses much higher degree of freedom regarding their opinions and views. The discussion highlighted on how Bangladeshi fashion industry could benefit from blogging in terms of sharing varied ideas and making critical analyses of the contemporary works and creating a readily accessible platform for information dispersion to all related to fashion.

The journalists also took a tour of the exhibits of the British designers at the museum to share and exchange ideas on their works. On the second day of the workshop Oku discussed some of the important aspects of writing fashion features with the journalists present, where importance of good observation of the colours, textiles, lightings, styles used by designers was emphasized.

This event will come to an end on January 11 through a fashion show by the participating Bangladeshi designers. About this unique event aimed at focusing on the creative and cultural aspects of east and west, the director of British Council Rosemary Arnott said, 'We often underestimate the strong influence of cultural heritage we have in our personal life, I am sure this exhibition will be of interest to Bangladeshi designers who want to thinkoutside the box.'