Stage 3 Fashion Management student Hanne Pulkkinen is currently on a year long placement at Polhem – a fashion, beauty and lifestyle public relations agency in Helsinki, Finland.
Hanne has had a fantastic placement experience where she has worked on a range of exciting campaigns. Hanne says:
“The fashion scene in Finland is small and very much a close knit community – made up of editors, stylists, bloggers and influencers. Everybody knows everyone.
My days as an PR intern consisted of media coverage reporting, social media management, showroom management, events management and lots of other tasks from steaming clothes to mailing packages.
My favorite part has to definitely be the events!Because Polhem works with a large clientele of brands, I got to experience and participate in a great variety of events, not only fashion.
Last summer the ice cream brand Halo Top was launched in Finland. To celebrate, Polhem created a SUPER Finnish sauna boat launch event for Halo Top. This was such a fun experience since it was so out of my comfort zone coming from fashion studies.
The last event we organised (before COVID-19) was a SS20 collection launch for Vamsko, a local Finnish family owned shoe brand.
The quirky pink venue was the perfect place to have the event, which was an absolute success with great coverage for the brand and wonderful feedback for us as an agency too.”
Thanks so much to Hanne for sharing her experience and these beautiful photographs!
It’s great to see so many of our students involved in local fashion events and initiatives across Aberdeen. We love seeing what they get up to through our @fashionplace_rgu Instagram. Keep tagging us everyone!
Here are some of our students (from across the various years) at the Stellar Aberdeen and Must Have Dresses UK fashion show event last week!
We have a group of second year student helpers and models taking part in the MISS fashion show later this month at Aberdeen’s Marcliffe Hotel and we look forward to sharing more on their experience… We were also delighted to offer the opportunity for a group of students to attend the LOVE fashion event this week!
This week our eleventh cohort of first year Fashion Management students have injected some colour into the campus with their fashion exhibition. Each year, as part of their Fashion Design Concepts and Communication module, the students are tasked with working in teams to create a colour exhibition.
The module aims to introduce our students to the basic components of visual communication and familiarise them with industry standard design software such as Adobe Photoshop and Kaledo Lectra.
It’s the first of a series of creative exhibitions that the students present during their time on the course. We look forward to seeing what else they have in store…
The last board (below) is particularly fitting with the autumnal mood on campus!
This summer, the School of Creative and Cultural Business at RGU hosted the first of its kind Supernatural in Contemporary Society conference. This event brought together researchers from across a range of disciplines and universities who shared their research.
Subject Lead and Fashion Management course leader Karen Cross designed three spooky fashion posters for the event…
These posters showcase findings from Karen’s research into comfort in clothing where she discovered a number of supernatural themes and ideas…
This week marked the end of our first years’ exhibition, which showcased fashion destinations from around the world. We’re delighted to share some of their creative ideas, captured beautifully by third year BA (Hons) Media students (Christie Breen and Alexis Flores) who’ve been on placement with our media team.
This project required students to work in teams, across a range of courses (fashion, events, PR and tourism) within the School of Creative and Cultural Business at RGU, in order to plan a creative exhibition and organise a launch event. Ten teams of students were assigned a charity and given £10 with which to buy a garment from the charity’s local branch. Their aim was to communicate a fashion destination of their choice, using the garment and charity as inspiration. Showcases included Scotland, Paris, Nigeria, Moscow, New York, Kenya, China and Hollywood.
During the launch event, students were tasked with promoting their charity and many chose to fundraise through bake sales and competitions. One team even brought along a mascot in the form of Lily the dog; this tied in well with their charity (PDSA) and she gained their team a lot of attention at the event.
We’re so proud of the commitment and enthusiasm our students gave to this project – well done to everyone involved!
The countdown to our annual charity fashion exhibition is on!
On Thursday the 12th of April at 12noon, first year Fashion Management, Events Management, International Tourism Management and PR students will launch their the annual charity fashion exhibition as part of their Managing in the Creative Industries module.
Over the past few weeks, the students have been working in teams to plan and organise an exhibition based on a chosen fashion destination. We’re very excited to see their ideas brought to life at next week’s event.
The exhibition will include a range of creative showcases inspired by an array of fashion destinations, where each display aims to support a different charity and showcase a garment from the local charity shop branch.
The exhibition will kick off with a launch event where the students will be on their stands to welcome guests and fundraise for their charity, through themed bake sales and goody bags. The teams are looking for some honest feedback so head along and let them know what you think!
This marks the third year of our digital fashion event. In 2016, we moved away from our traditional fashion show event module and gave this a more digital focus. This is in response to a changing industry, where employers are seeking graduates with an increasingly digital skill set. Indeed, the purpose of fashion shows today are widely debated and the definition of a fashion show is being challenged and extended in new ways.
Here at RGU, we’re lucky to have access to creative resources and expertise to help us deliver these modules. Our purpose built film and photography studio and range of film equipment and software allows students to gain experience using industry standard facilities. Our media team are made up of individuals with skills in audio, video, Macs, design, specialist software and photography. The team deliver hands on experience across a range of courses, including journalism, media, marketing and fashion management.
Jen BirtlesKelman was asked to write a blog post about the digital fashion event to date and how this has evolved in its three years. Jen works as part of the media and eLearning team at RGU. A Gray’s School of Art graduate in Textile Design, she exhibited her designs as part of ROAR Exhibition in London’s OXO Tower Warf as part of Scotland’s emerging talent. Since then she worked as a Creative for Apple, training staff and customers to use professional software like Final Cut Pro, Logic and Aperture and gaining professional qualifications in the software. She also gained industry experience working on film and photography projects for clients before joining us at RGU and creating many more marketing videos for the university. Here’s what she has to say about the Digital Fashion Event…
I have been privileged to teach the students who choose to participate on this module since the introduction of the digital element, and I’m amazed by the commitment the students show, the speed at which they pick up the necessary skills and put them into practice with their film shoots, always producing something new and exciting each year.
For those of you who have yet to enter third year, the Digital Fashion Event is an elective double credit module that runs alongside placement. Students can choose to go out on placement for 12 weeks or opt to do a 6 week placement in conjunction with the 6 week Digital Fashion Event module. Students who participate in our Digital Fashion Event learn new skills in filming, storyboarding and editing over an intensive two week training course, followed by four weeks where they’ll put these skills into practice – creating their fashion film.
Students who have participated in the module over the last two years have enjoyed the experience and many have gone on to use these skills again, in their studies and their careers:
Ellen Laird was an Editor for the first ever digital fashion show in 2016. She went on to use her filming and editing skills in fourth year, opting to deliver a practical professional project and producing a film looking at CrossFit. She also created a Kickstarter campaign video for SEINCLLN, unisex knitwear brand launch. She now works for Revolution as a Sales and Events Co-ordinator and has created marketing films in her role there.
“The Digital Fashion Show was probably my favourite module that we did thought my four years at RGU. I was head of filming and editing. From those editing skills I got a placement over summer and made a Kickstarter video. It’s given me a little bit more extra than everyone else, the skills definitely open more doors.”
You can watch the first fashion film here, where the brief was ‘Northern culture’ and the students chose to focus on different forms of Energy, taking inspiration from Aberdeen’s status as European “oil capital”.
Since co-producing and directing the second fashion film in 2017, Gabrielle Etchells (currently in fourth year) has set up her own film company Joy Studio Productions. She has also worked to create two films for the fashion brand Latte. She reflects on her experience:
“The digital fashion show module equipped me with skills and a new found passion of filming producing and editing, which I’ve turned into a business. I learnt management skills working with a large creative team, and created a film which I am so proud to have my name associated with. Before the module I was considering a career in buying but now I am seeking future jobs which have more of a creative marketing angle”
The 2017 fashion film was recently submitted to RGU’s student film festival. Their brief was “fashion is creative, fashion is culture, fashion is business” as this film marked the launch of RGU’s School of Creative and Cultural Business. You can watch this here.
This year’s fashion film is slightly different in that the students are working with a live client, Lindsay and Yoshi, who has asked for a fashion video to promote her scarf and homewares brand. Lindsay graduated from Gray’s School of Art in 2008 and established her brand in 2010. She says:
“Join Yoshi (my dog) on his kaleidoscopic adventure through the natural world as he meets the beautiful creatures who inhabit it. I’m a big fan of Beatrix Potter, William Morris and Liberty of London. I graduated from Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen in 2008 and established Lindsay & Yoshi textiles in 2010 as a way to share my artwork on products that had some sort of functionality. I create colourful silk scarves, soft furnishings and stationery. Each design begins as an illustration that is then transformed digitally. Every item is printed and handmade in the UK. I hand finish each piece at my home studio in rural Aberdeenshire. The natural world fascinates me, everything from the creatures at the bottom of the sea to the colours up in the sky. My favourite moment so far has to be when I watched the Aurora Borealis with Yoshi.”
The Lindsay & Yoshi website is currently under construction and the video produced by this year’s students as part of the Digital Fashion Event will be used to mark the launch of this!
Lindsay has asked for movement to be considered in the film, with a focus on her scarves and the story behind the designs. Here’s a sneak peek behind the scenes of this year’s shoots so far…
The students are just over halfway though the project now, with under three weeks left to finish filming and editing the final film for their client. This week they will be shooting on location in Tollohill woods in Aberdeen, with models from Premiere Productions. They have also begun to start editing their first three film shoots.
This week we welcomed our students back from their Christmas break! It’s great to see the campus so lively again (even if we do have to wait a little longer when queuing for our morning coffee!)
Second semester at the Fashion Place is always a really exciting one where our students are involved in a number of live projects and placements. Many of our third years have just started their work experience placements this week and there are some fantastic opportunities including: Harvey Nichols, Hemingway Design, Johnstons of Elgin, and the Herald and Times. Later in the semester, our Masters students will be going off on placement and we look forward to sharing more on this soon!
A number of events will take place over the next few months and our students will be busy organising these over the coming weeks. One event will be our annual charity Fashion exhibition; this is organised by teams of first year Fashion Management, Events Management, PR and Tourism students. This year’s exhibition theme will be Fashion Destinations and students are tasked to choose a fashion destination (city, country, region or ‘place’), source and style a charity shop garment and designing an exhibition space around this.
Our first years are also starting work on their window display ideas for their Store Design and Visual Merchandising module; this year’s theme is Sustainability and we’re keen to see how this is interpreted by our students.
Our digital fashion event has also kicked off and this year the students have teamed up local designer Lindsay and Yoshi to create a fashion film. This will be launched on the client’s website in March!
Looking forward to sharing more on these projects over the coming weeks…
Today our first year Fashion Management, Events Management and Public Relations students launched their Fashion Exhibition: a Celebration of Creativity and Culture. There were so many highlights that we don’t quite know where to begin…
We’re looking forward to sharing more photos of the full exhibition spaces soon but here’s a sneak peak at some of the charity shop garments and from today’s launch event!
The stands looked great and were all really different and exciting in their own way! From balloon animals to tarot card readings, there were lots of interesting ideas for audience engagement.
There was even some handmade bunting which will be donated to Sue Ryder Care after the exhibition!
Tomorrow our students have their exhibition debrief where we’ll discuss our successes and identify areas for improvement.
Overall, we’d like to congratulate our students on a wonderfully styled and creative event! Although we don’t yet have a final total, we’re delighted to have raised over £200 between the charities represented.
Who doesn’t love candy floss and a touch of pink? That’s what one of our student groups thought when they chose a candy striped shirt from Aberdeen’s Cancer Research shop! Styled with a denim skirt, the Cotton Candies plan to theme their fashion showcase around a traditional British carnival – inspired by the hit musical and movie Grease.
We look forward to seeing this colourful, feel-good fun brought to life at the exhibition launch on the 12th of April! We’re guessing there will be sweeties involved…
The Fashion Place 