11:54am Thursday 31st May 2007
By Miriam Craig
Victorian frills and flashes of neon were some of the flourishes to be seen at a fashion show put on by students at Barnet College last Wednesday.
The show, made up of work by those studying on the college's BTEC National Diploma and HND/Foundation Degree Fashion and Textiles courses, took place at the artsdepot, North Finchley, in front of friends, family and fashion industry contacts.
Louise Ratford, senior garment technologist at fashion design company Mark H Ltd, based in Hatfield, attended the event. She said: "The show was very well organised and there were some designers that were pretty interesting, even though they weren't ready to graduate yet. Seeing how they used the same idea to develop three or four outfits was good, because that's something we do in the industry.
"If I could criticise something I would say they could put more emphasis on the workmanship rather than on having outrageous ideas, because it's unlikely the students will go straight into couture fashion - they'll work in commercial fashion first. But at that stage in their training you can't really quash people's ideas, because they need encouragement."
One of the students exhibiting her work was Rose Kaleke, who is in her final year studying a HND in Fashion and Textiles.
Ms Kaleke ran her own boutique in her home country of Malawi for five years, before deciding she wanted to learn about the practical elements of design and the construction behind making clothes.
She said: "It was very frustrating - sometimes I would buy clothes for my boutique and the fit of the clothes was very bad, so this made me decide to do something constructive and learn about how to make and design clothes so then I could go back home and set up my business again with this knowledge."
Rose's collection consisted of summery separates in muted shades of pink, grey and coffee.
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