Fashion Design Graduate Show

Tuesday 2nd July Fashion Design Graduate Show: Made In Huddersfield

The academic team responsible for final year students of fashion design within the Fashion and Textiles department at the University of Huddersfield have worked together to bring to fruition a celebration of the student’s final year work. The degrees represented were Fashion Design with Digital Technology BA (Hons), Fashion Design with Marketing BA (Hons) and Fashion Design with Textiles BA (Hons).

The work was presented across two events on the 2nd of July 2024 at the renowned Laurence Batley Theatre, Huddersfield. The first event which was a private ticketed show as part of the fashion team’s public engagement approach for local schools, colleges and a select group of VIPs including the University Senior Leadership Team and a senior management delegation from Huddersfield Town Football Club. The second show later in the evening was open to students, family, friends, and the general public which was a ticketed and a charged event in the evening.  

Each of the final year students presented their own collection on the catwalk to music and appropriate lighting with minimal and generic accessories as a deliberate strategy to highlight the design work of the students. Students had been encouraged to produced garments using dead stock, consider minimal fabric waste approaches and the repurposing of existing products. From music to choreography the underlying themes of the move to a slower fashion system.

Huddersfield Town Football as part of their own public engagement strategy kindly sponsored the event. This was a continuation of their relationship with the Huddersfield University fashion academic team which has seen in May a live brief with students to redesign and repurpose previous seasons football shirts whilst adding their own design direction and skills to the shirts (see fig 1.) The work was focused on the need to be sustainable across fashion and sport and the growth and embedding of circularity into the fashion system removing the take-make-waste model (Ellen Macarthur Foundation, 2024). From music to choreography the underlying themes of the move to a slower fashion system were embedded into the show production. The work from the football shirt project was displayed at the Laurence Batley Theatre entrance hall on the day of the show.

Then academic team involved in the show were Dr Claire Evans and Dr Charlotte Goldthorpe (Event management), Dr Andrew Hewitt (Music and photography), Kathryn Brennand (choreography), Debbie Allsop (backstage manager) and Guy McKelvey (marketing and production management). The event was widely publicised appearing on the Laurence Batley website (see fig 2.), Huddersfield Town Football club’s social channels and the University of Huddersfield’s socials and website as well as the fashion design socials such as Instagram and content was produced by students from the BA(Hons) Fashon Marketing course overseen by tutor Guy McKelvey.