Georgia Randles

For my first year of study at the Manchester Fashion Institute, I had the wonderful experience of learning new garment construction techniques; being inducted to use the Innovation Zone at the Manchester Fashion Institute; how to pattern cut manually and digitally using Gerber Accumark Software; how to draw CADs using Adobe Illustrator; how to use Adobe InDesign; as well as being lucky enough of going on the 2019 Study Trip to Porto, Portugal. At the end of the year as well, the Level 4's and the Level 5's put on a fabulous End of the Year Fashion Show, where it was organised purely by the students and it was a wonderful experience. 

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When I first started university, I started as a Womenswear Design Student, all my previous experience from studying at Sixth Form and High School in fashion was Womenswear. Therefore, the first two projects I did at university were Womenswear, then for the third project I decided to experiment and try Menswear. The 3 projects from first year are the 'Renew - The White Shirt Project', 'Pachuco x Rave' and 'Sailing'. The White Shirt Project focused on renewing and refreshing the White Shirt, so I mixed 1960's & Op Art elements. I also visited galleries around Manchester to get inspiration as well. I also wanted to explore and experiment with new technology so I created an Op Art Repeat Pattern from a piece of artwork at the Manchester Art Gallery using a Laser Cutter to create the pattern in the fabric. I was incredibly proud of the final garment. The Pachuco x Rave project was a project where we had to combine two different subcultures  to create a new, fresh, fun collection. The first subculture I picked was the 'Rave' Subculture, I really wanted to include bright, Neon Colours, Wavy Patterns and Prints to represent the subculture. The second subculture I picked was Pachuco, I loved the masculine and powerful style of the garments. The 'Zoot Suit' being famous for oversized jackets, and large, baggy trousers became an instant recognisable style around America. This project was incredibly fun, and I loved my final garment as it had Rainbow Fur, Wavy Patterns, and a cute bralette, I loved the combination of all these and I thought it all worked brilliantly together. The 'Sailing' Project was consumer based focus, so my consumer base were Men who's hobby was sailing. I was particularly inspired by the study trip to Porto, Portugal as I visited a marina there with lots of boats. So the concept for this unit is Sailing & Shibarian Rope Art. My main focus is to develop a garment suitable for sailing and is designed to fit the customers needs. As I wanted to make my garment functional and suitable for sailing, I explored different techniques such as creating 100% waterproof seams, using waterproof fabric and experimenting with rope and elastics cord. 

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During First Year at the Manchester Fashion Institute, I was lucky enough to go on the February 2019 study trip to Porto, Portugal. This was a fantastic look into industry and garment production, as we visited 2 factories and a tailors as well. We visited Petratex & Calvelex, and it was such an insightful experience into industry and the factory process of creating garments and seeing how much work goes into that. It was brilliant as well to see past and present innovations from these factories. From visiting these factories, I took away consideration of when designing garments to think how they would be produced in a factory and what the order of construction is. It was a wonderful experience to visit these factories and it inspired me to explore more areas of the fashion industry and new construction methods. We also visited a tailors in Porto as well, and I was incredibly impressed with the studios and the machinery that this tailors had; it was fabulous to see as well some of the past garments they had created. I was also impressed by the quality of the fabric and the garments they were producing, you could clearly see the exceptional work that had gone into the garments. Overall, it was a fabulous experience visiting all these places in Porto, and has definitely inspired me to look at different areas of construction and to not be afraid to experiment with detail, fit or construction.

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At the end of First Year, most of the Level 4 & Level 5 students wanted to have a fashion show to display all the hard work we have done with creating our garments, so we organised an End of Year Fashion Show. As students we raised the finance ourselves and created a crowdfunding site to help raise money for the Fashion Show. Thankfully, so many friends & family donated to the site, which allowed us raise enough finance to cover costs of the venue, food for models and transport costs. The Fairfield Social Club in Manchester hosted the End of Year Fashion Show, and each student who participated had at least two garments in the show, and we had a mixture of different garments from different projects, which created such a fabulous, creative show. Not only did I have two garments in the show, I was also part of the catering team for the show. We bought snacks and bottles of water for all the team, dressers and models for the show and throughout the day. On the day of the Fashion Show, all team got to the venue early, and a few of us helped transport the garments. We then set up the runway, the seating areas, the make up stations and the dressing section. Then we did several run throughs of the show, to make sure the lighting, sound and presentation was working. For the show I was a dresser and assisting the model, so it was important to change the outfits for the model quickly and carefully. The show was fabulous and insane. It was a celebration of the work we did at The Manchester Fashion Institute. And audience said it was such a fun, relaxed environment and the photographs showed it was all about having fun and promoting the talent and creativity of the Manchester Fashion Institute. At the end of the show we all celebrated and felt incredibly proud of ourselves!