Guest panel member

Last week we were delighted to welcome Craig Stevenson, Bon Accord Centre Manager, to be an expert panel member for the fourth years’ Global fashion Strategy presentations. With the changing pace of retail and the pressure for survival, fashion stores have to move quickly with innovative strategies. Students were tasked to work in teams and come up with creative strategies to drive their chosen business forward.

Many great ideas were highlighted on the day, including a pop up shop with integrated mobile technology apps, which lend themselves to the local marketplace and an innovate gym space.

The students benefitted greatly on the day from Craig’s expertise in asking questions, making the presentation feel real to them. Craig said “It is fantastic to hear such creative suggestions from the students.  Bon Accord strives to be as innovative as possible and listening to the presentations gives a feel for what the future could look like!”

Impromptu photoshoot

What better way to start the week than with an impromptu photoshoot? Here’s a behind the scenes glimpse of our fabulous first years bringing some serious Hollywood glamour to the studio for their window display project!

Store design

  
We had a fun morning visiting Union Square and Bon Accord & St Nicholas shopping malls with our first years who are carrying out research for their store design project! 

Each year our students choose an Aberdeen-based unit on which to base a design concept for a hypothetical new fashion store. 

Watch this space for our students’ exciting window display designs which we’ll share in April; these will be based on a Rio theme in celebration of the upcoming Olympic Games! 

Clare Richardson – Guest Speaker

Thanks to Clare Richardson, Operations Manager at John Lewis Aberdeen, for a fantastic guest lecture today. Clare spoke to our first year and MSc Fashion Management students this afternoon as part of their respective Fashion Retail and Fashion Business modules. This was an excellent opportunity for the students to gain insight into a dynamic and successful British fashion retailer with a really interesting history. It also helped contextualise a lot of the theory that we teach during the course in a real life case study example.

We’re hugely grateful for the support John Lewis provide for our Fashion Management programme, employing a number of our students part-time, providing placement opportunities and contributing to our annual student fashion show.

An excellent end to the semester!