P.R. Diary

Barking College students meet TopShop

Its not every day that you get to meet the Buying Director of TopShop! It can take months to even obtain an appointment with buyers let alone meet them too.

Yet a select few would be next generation designers from Barking College had the most amazing opportunity to show a collection of t-shrits for Spring Summer 08!

Early this week Jenny Holloway, Director of Fashion-Enter, took a selection of students over to the Head Offices at TOPSHOP at Berners Street London W1 where they were met by Caren Downie – Buying Director and Rachel Proud the Senior Buyer. Each student was placed into teams (brands) and then the six teams all had to present their collections to win the eye of the discerning buyers! The Barking designers did not disappoint!

The presentations where of an extremely high standard and the total process took over four hours. The t-shrits were as professional as any top design house would prepare – careful market research had been conducted, the TopShop brief had been carefully followed and the T-shirts were actually made to the highest of quality standards.


TopShop were impressed as Caren Downie commented below...

“This is the first time we have worked with a college and we were absolutely delighted with the calibre of the students showcasing their work. We were particularly impressed with Jadi Orange who had carefully conducted their market research, followed our tight brief and then translated the t-shirts for the TopShop profiled customer. Initially the project was to select one winning t-shirt from the students but in both cases it was too difficult to choose and we had no alternative but to select the whole range! The next step is to have an internal meeting to decide on which options to buy but we do intend to retain the branding as submitted by the team teamsas they stood up as labels in their own right!”

The next stage is to hold a pre-production meeting with TopShop Quality Control Department and confirm the buying options. The labelling has to be in accordance with Trading Standards guidelines and then the sewing machines begin to roll and production begins to roll!

This new styled workshop and seminar has been made possible by the fundng received from Thames Gateway and grateful thanks to John Middleton and Derek Levey from Barking & Dagenham Regeneration.