Interning at Manchester Fashion Week

At the end of April I interned with the Manchester Fashion Week team over the Easter weekend (I really need to be more prompt with my blogging!).

As an intern for fashion events you expect to do all the guinea pig jobs during the day like making goodie bags, lugging them to the venue (I’ve definitely developed guns), promoting the weekend and all that jazz! At around 2pm it would be all hands on deck with exhibitions arriving to set up, models arriving for fittings and designers transporting their collections backstage if they hadn’t earlier in the week.

The first of the three days showcased graduates’ work which I thought promoted Manchester talent perfectly; marrying up and coming talent with already established Manchester designers and brands.  The more creative of the graduates had collections with huge head pieces, natural materials (like straw) and believe it or not, razor blades! These were absolutely stunning creations but made dressing more difficult as you want to please the graduates by styling the models well but with such little time to even get the outfits on in time was a struggle, especially with only six models; super quick changes were crucial. Contrary to expectation, dressing for Manchester Fashion Week was more demanding than London Fashion Week which I was lucky enough to be a dresser at earlier this year. Despite this, with such a great backstage team, Manchester Fashion Week ran very smoothly, well from an outside perspective!

Left - Some of the gorgeous models backstage and Right - Hallé St Peters the beautiful venue!

Me and another intern Rhian with Jsky the presenter and final designers of the Saturday show.

Cheeky pic with Denise and gorgeous detailing of one of Get Clobbered's designs.

The second day saw some retail based brands and Manchester designers showcase their garments on the catwalk. With less interns available on this day and 4 male models added to the equation backstage was even more packed and hectic (although I wasn’t complaining about the male models!) Similarly to the first day, there was a collection made from entirely natural, delicate materials and also a swimwear brand with outrageously beautiful Showgirl-esque headpieces. The retail based collections were slotted in between to ensure everything ran more smoothly! For this day, there was an interval due to an increased number of collections but also to accommodate for a designer called Eustratia. Eustratia’s collection was entirely made from skin-tight latex in summery pastels, so in the interval there was latex and masses of talc flying everywhere! The final designer wished to dress her own collection so we got to watch the final catwalk and I managed to get a cheeky snap with Denise Welch from Loose Women.

The final day again consisted of a mixture of retail and couture brands and one of my favourite brands; Get Clobbered who showcased immaculate handmade headpieces and statement jewellery. The weekend ended with a bang with humongous creations by Adnan Bayyat who named this final collection ‘Birds of Paradise’; sky high creations, over 500 paperclips and a 2m wide dress (a row of seats had to be taken out to accommodate for this whopper of a dress!). Great theatrics were provided for this finale with such ambitious and creative garments teamed up with thrown glitter and functional parts of the outfits!

Overall I had such an enjoyable weekend meeting interns, designers, graduates and models and wouldn’t hesitate to do it all over again!

x