The aim of Fashion Awareness Direct is to provide young people with a realistic insight into what it means to work in fashion. From hands on workshops and industry days to high profile catwalk events, they learn important practical skills while also developing the confidence and experience they need to succeed in the future.

The ethos that underpins all of their initiatives is to make the person central to design, promoting respect for the wearer and integrating art and culture into fashion. The challenging briefs encourage young people to explore new cultures and areas of research, inspiring intelligent design and individual expression.

BSix has been working closely with the FAD team for the past few years through encouraging and supporting keen art students to take part in the Fashion Futures programme. Last year was an exciting year for the BSix-FAD collaborative work as it saw one of our final year students, Aminata Kulufua taking part in the catwalk final. As a direct result she was offered a two week placement with the design team at River Island and is now studying Fashion at Hertfordshire University. Over the past year Aminata has also become a dedicated FAD volunteer, donating her time and skills to other young people and taking a lead role at the charity’s London Fashion Week events.

BSix College were also selected in 2009 to receive a widening participation award from the University of the Arts London as a result of our work alongside FAD!

The programme continues to be popular with Art and Design students and the benefit is huge as expressed in the following quote from current BSix student, Amy Diallo, “I like Fashion Futures 2 because it gives really young designers a chance to present their work.”

Maria Alvarez, Executive Director, FAD said:
The aim of our creative charity is to support young people to bridge the gap between education and industry. I feel very proud of young people like Aminata who benefit so much from our projects, develop so many personal and vocational skills and, afterwards, have the concern to transmit these to others. It makes our hard work worth while!