OPPORTUNITIES: New Fashion Jobs Board

Looking for jobs in fashion?

Fashion United have been working on their job listings portal, and have now released their new Jobs Board, which has a great array of fashion industry jobs, from creative pattern cutting, seamstresses, creative internships and design work. 

Its a brilliant resource for paid work and for experience, we recommend you have a good search through it and see if there's anything for you! Click here.

 Good for graduates, students, professionals and freelancers alike. If you're not quite ready to progress onto jobs like these, and want to build on your skills first, check out our skill focused short courses on our website.

OPPORTUNITES: Great tips from a great stylist

One for all you budding stylists and designers out there: Helpful tips and tricks from Stylist Aimee Croysdill and Alison Lowe from Felicities PR

Roses Gabor - styled by Aimee Croysdill

These are Aimees tips:

• Don’t underestimate the usefulness of placing your outfits on a lesser-known singer. One: they may make it big, and when they’re on tv every week, they’ll be wearing your brand. Two: Even if they don’t smash it, music video shoots attract PR people & stylists like wasps to a lollypop. You want those guys looking at your clothes!

• When you give your garments to a celebrity stylist for a shoot, you have to let go a little. A dress may come back with a broken zip, buttons may be looser than you remember... but you’ll get massive press. 

• If your clothes aren’t credited in a shoot, don’t get annoyed. Sometimes not every brand gets listed. You can still use the shoot to your advantage - mention it to PR people, put it on your website.

• In the words of Alison Lowe, ‘Twitter and Pinterest are the biggest things to hit fashion in... forever!’ - so get on them! Use Twitter to get in touch with sylists & PRs, and create pinterest boards that showcase your wares & display your brand’s personality. 

• If you want to attract the attention of a PR agency or a Stylist, maybe step away from the ‘press release’ email. Top PRs receive thousands of emails every day, so your mail may well get lost in the funk. Solution? Tweet them! Engaging over Twitter allows you to build a relationship with a stylist or PR.

• Who do you tweet? Look at the masthead of a fashion mag, find out who edits each section - tweet them! Look at a really nice fashion shoot, find out who did the styling - tweet them!

• If you’re emailing a stylist, keep your messages short. These people are so busy, so they don’t want your verbage. Get straight to the point. 

• Don’t tell them your life story. Similar to the point above, if you’re chatting to a stylist or PR via email, don’t give them your brand’s mission statement. However gallant and noble, they’re more bothered about what they garments look like. If you simply ‘must’ tell them what your brand is all about, keep it to one sentence.

• Only use great quality images. If you give a PR person a bad quality image, they’ll probably bin it, and bin you. Let them see how great your clothes are! 

• If you’re going to a Fashion event - especially business advice nights! - bring your lookbook with you. You never know who will be there to take a look. 

• The final tip from Aimee Croysdill: use good quality zips. Top celebs are less likely to break a good quality zip.

We saw this on Club Workspace, check them out here.

OPPORTUNITIES: Students Go Think Big

A great resource for potential opportunities and internships with big brands.

The Think Big intiative comes from Bauer Media and o2 - two of the big players in youth centered entertainment and brands. Its not necessarily fashion or garment orientated, but the site itself has loads of great information to help any one get started, no matter your discipline, and some of their placements are very relevant - an internship at Heat Magazine, a position as an o2 events photographer anyone?

It's nice to see such big brands focusing on youth careers, which doesn't happen too often. We recommend taking full advantage of their resources, such as advice on interviews and placements, and have a peek at their opportunities board too.

Have a look at what they've got on offer here

OPPORTUNITIES: Get Inspired

Nothing gets the creative cogs turning as much as a good exhibition, and there's some fabulous one on around town at the moment. Pop into the Fashion and Textile museum for the ultimate Pop culture collection, or head over to the ever brilliant V&A for an exquisite ballgown exhibit.

Fashion design students and illustrators, take a sketchbook and get comfy, and sketch some of these amazing garments down and make them your own, or copy inspiring shapes and quotes from Pop & Punk.

POP! DESIGN • CULTURE • FASHION

Fashion and Textiles museum

6 July 2012 - 27 October 2012
Open Tuesday to Saturday, 11am - 6pm
Last Admissions 5.15pm
Closed Sunday and Monday

Ticket Price:£7 for adults £5 for students and concessions

Ballgowns: British Glamour Since 1950
£10.00 Full
£7.00 Senior citizens
£7.00 Concessions
£17.00 Family of 3 (One adult & two 12-17 year olds)

Exhibition opening times

19 May 2012–6 January2013Daily 10.00–17.30

Someday All the Adults Will Die!

Punk Graphics 1971-1984

14 September 2012, 10:00am - 4 November 2012, 18:00pm

OPPORTUNITIES: What could you do for a fiver?

One of the best pieces of advice I think I've ever been given is to not under sell myself.

Admittedly, you can't beat the experience you get from interning, and at some point in every creative's career you have to do some work for free, but for the rest of the time, you deserve your rate. When you have a genuine skill, a trade, you deserve to be paid a competitive rate for your time and expertise, and at Fashion Antidote we champion skilled workers getting head in the industry.

For this reason, sites such as Fiverr or Jacks Alive, where people offer services for the flat rate of 5 pound (or dollars) can seem a bad idea, why would you want to sell your skills for such a low rate? 

On the contrary, we think these sites are a really innovative way to promote yourself, get practice and earn a bit of cash while you're at it.

The key to this is to offer a simple service, that deserves the low price, but that is a service that people need. There are silly offers, such as "I will film a short video dressed as Jesus Christ for you" or "I will sing a depressing Happy Birthday as a mouse" but amongst that are some great skills.

Why not offer to send a video teaching a basic sewing technique? A quick sketch of a design for a dress they describe? 

You can also follow up the service with your information, and this could lead to further work, for example; when sending your quick sketch of a dress for £5, make sure to mention that you could develop the design and more like it, and include your contact details/portfolio/website.

Check out Jacks alive here

OPPORTUNITES: Design Festival

London Design Festival

14^th – 23^rd September London is host to the 10^th Anniversary of the Design Festival.

Ideal for promising fashion designers, this is a great opportunity to keep your finger on the pulse and catch lots of free art exhibits, galleries, events, installations, design presentations… the list of events are endless, check out their site here for everything that’s going on.

The V&A is going to be a hub of activity during the period, click here to see what’s going to be on at our favourite museum.

The whole event looks to be incredibly inspiring, with a huge breadth of design related expos. Here a couple of the fashion related events:

Seven Designers for Seven Dials

Aerial open air exhibition/installation celebrating 7 designers in the 7 dials area of Covent Garden during the design festival. Pop into the Dezeen Super Store located at 38 Monmouth Street for a guide, 12^th – 30^th September.

Walterworks

Fashion art installation – we're not sure where it lies, but Walterworks looks to definitely be an inspiring fashion event within Design Week. From 17^th – 19^th September, 11AM to 8 PM, Walterworks will present brilliant designs of Wearable Art, Fashion made entirely from shoes, including trainers. The 2012 exhibition will include the wonderful recycled designs from 2 other young leading-edge Belgian designers, to be announced. See here for more info.

OPPORTUNITIES: Africa Fashion Week

This weekend Africa Fashion Week takes place at Spitalfields market, celebrating and promoting all that African fashion has to offer, from African designers championing traditional technique, and contemporary young African designers, to British designers inspired by African craft.

AFWL say their vision is: "To increase the visibility of our designers, enhance their productivity so that their brands become accessible globally."

 "Africa Fashion Week London (AFWL) is a collaborative fashion exhibition, highlighting the industry’s premier African prints and designers. AFWL is at the fore front of capturing the surge of the African inspired trends in the fashion industry.

Our event is open to designers of all nationalities, who are inspired by Africa in their designs.

The premiere of the annual Africa Fashion Week London was held on the 5th and 6th of August 2011, at the Gibson Hall in the city of London and attracted an audience of 4700 visitors. The 2 day event also featured catwalks from 54 designers."

The event is a great opportunity to get a real feel of the catwalk side of the industry, and unlike London Fashion Week, is totally free and open to everyone. There will be a small start up brands alongside more established brands, press and buyers, so a great insight to the media side of the fashion industry. See the site here for tickets or head down and see whats going on.

OPPORTUNITIES: Getting started with an online presence

In an age over-saturated by media and the immediacy of the internet, not having an online presence is a fatal mistake for a freelancer or business start-up.

An online portfolio or show-case of your work is an essential, and surprisingly easy, tool for any freelancer to utilise. Treat them as a flexible, interactive and easy to find business cards, and add info about you and your business, images and social media to connect and inform your visitors.

Photographers or fashion illustrators –upload your finest images and share them with potential collaborators and employers with an easy to follow link.

Freelance designers, garment makers and fashion labels – create a shop on many of the online boutiques – asos marketplace or etsy are great for start-ups – and even get an integrated shop and sell your designs online. We suggest secure payment such as Paypal to reassure your customers.

Stylists and art directors – websites of your images of your work are great for you too of course, but a blog or tumblr showing your personal likes, interests, connections and thoughts is a great way to display your style. Promote yourself, get followers and get your name recognised.

 

Carbonmade.com

Carbonmade is a free portfolio site, great for illustrators, artists and designers, that is really user friendly and easy to use. The free version is limited to a certain number of pictures, but its great for starting out. Check it out here: http://carbonmade.com/

Etsy

Etsy is the handmade marketplace. Their innovative personal online boutique style actually allows you to communicate with your customer and sell your wares. Click here for a blog post about good selling practice within Etsy for tips on making a higher profit on your sales. 

We will soon be including hand-outs about creating an online portfolio as a part of our Design courses, Skills Training Programme and of course Business courses.

OPPORTUNITIES: British Fashion Council Support Network

There are loads of resources out there for young designers and burgeoning businesses, the trick is knowing where to look!

The people behind fashion week, The British Fashion Council (or BFC) have endless resources, schemes and competitions supporting the finest in new design talent.

Many of their initiatives are reserved for the elite, but they also have a huge range of support, information and contacts for every level of designer, looking to get into business.

Check out there Business Support Network, where they list all kinds of bodies and companies covering subjects such as awards, advice, intellectual property advice, funding, studio space, mentoring and training.

The Business Support Network is “intended to be an easy-access tool for fashion businesses and individuals in the fashion industry looking for business support, from showcasing opportunities and funding, to training and advice for manufacturers and designers.”

Check it out here, and have a peek round the BFC site while you're at it.

OPPORTUNITIES: Online Jobs boards

A couple of our favourite jobs boards online:

Gumtree

Often overlooked for job vacancies, Gumtree.com is filled with opportunities in fashion, textiles, pattern cutting and dressmaking.

The competition may be high, but if you’ve got a clear and concise CV and portfolio of your work, Gumtree is a great resource to find jobs.

Graduates from our Pattern Cutting programme or dressmaking courses often ask how to take the next step into finding employment with this essential skill, and although not a trade resource, Gumtree is a good place to start. Search within your local area and see what’s out there. Its also a good gauge of how much you can hope to earn through positions within different areas.

Check out Gumtree’s job listings here.

Fashion United

Fashion united is an amazing resource, and all round fashion hub, that we use for fashion news and information. Their jobs board is a great place to find positions within creative and practical fashion roles.

Its also a great place to find internships, and although we don’t advocate unpaid work for an unreasonable period of time, some of the short term internships would provide you with some priceless experience.

See their website here and see what positions are on offer.

OPPORTUNITIES: Beta Fashion

Beta Fashion Projects

Beta Fashion is a website and venture developed to promote a new, design centred, collaborative way to create fashion garments. This open platform for fashion design allows artists, print and graphic designers to submit designs and then, through voting and social media platforms, the winning designs are featured of garments.

A great ways for designers to gain exposure and a taste of the commercial industry, check it out and submit your designs today.

See the website here for how to contribute your designs

https://www.betafashion.com/

This is print designer Nikki Strange's latest contribution, a stunning, vivid kaleidoscope of colour. See her other designs and recent winning designs here.

OPPORTUNITIES: Great resource for pattern cutting jobs

Pattern Cutting is one of the great unsung roles in fashion. 

 

We get many a university student, mid-degree, come to our drop in sessions or pattern cutting classes looking to learn this essential skill to boost their portfolio and their skills. It’s a trade in its own right, and it’s a real shame that many fashion design degree courses don’t seem to offer an industry level of tuition in this subject; a good pattern cutter will never be without work, in the sense that it is a trade, one we have in recent years seemingly forgotten.

Many of the students we have through our Pattern Cutting classes at Fashion Antidote go onto jobs within the industry, behind the scenes with designers and fashion houses, vital cogs in the fashion machine.

A great resource for such jobs is the University of the Arts Creative Opportunities section of their website. Although it says the places are for university of the arts graduates only, as that’s where the resource is from, all jobs are of course open to all applicants, and the list is often updates with Pattern Cutting vacancies. Although highly competitive, definitely opportunities to be grabbed!

http://creativeopportunities.arts.ac.uk/

OPPORTUNITIES: Fashion, art, design and photography student showcase

Free Range at the Truman Brewery

Image from Free Range

91-95 Brick Lane, E1 6QL from 28 May to 16 July. 

Entrance is free.

A great opportunity for prospective uni students to see what this years graduates have created, perfect for those of you still on the fence about which degree to take or which discipline to dedicate your studies to. 

More info on the Londonist website, where there is also lots more great events to check out.

OPPORTUNITIES - design the next etnies eco tee contest - the planet is our playground

Design the next Etnies eco tee contest -  The planet is our playground

Etnies are asking the their fans to deign the new Eco tshirt, as a part of their bid to become carbon neutral by 2020.

A great opportunities to exercise your designing skills, especially if you’re a fan of boarding or extreme sports, and the 2 designs that received the most votes on the Facebook application will go into production. On top of that, a team of Etnies designers will select 2 designs that will also go in to production to be part of the Etnies Spring 2013 line.

In addition to the 4 winners having their design featured in the collection, the design with the most votes will win 5 pairs of Etnies Eco Jameson shoes and a handmade wooden surfboard.

Its pretty easy to enter, go to the Etnies Facebook (you have to like it to see it im afraid) and watch the video and follow the instructions. The competition ends on Wednesday June 6^th, so best of luck, and get designing!

http://vimeo.com/41480498