“The most important things we gained from fashion school were the people we met and the connections we made,” says Katie Rose Dewar and Alison Keogh of Keogh Dewar, who connected during their BA at Central Saint Martins and recently showcased their graduate collection at London Fashion Week. “Coming to London, having had absolutely none of that prior, it is definitely the most irreplaceable and amazing outcome of being at CSM for our BA and Masters.”
“Show up for people, come with a great idea, and people in London are always down to clown,” says Quin Cunningham, a CSM Fashion Communication graduate and founder of PISS Magazine. “You aren’t entitled to success right off the bat, but making use of uni resources till they’ve got nothing left to give you is what school is for. There’s a spirit of doing things for free or scraping together a little money as a community of passionate people to create something beautiful.”
Fashion school compresses years of networking into a pressure-cooker environment, allowing creatives to find their people fast and forge relationships that can last for years to come. Releasing thousands of students into the job market each year might make finding work more competitive, but it also increases your chances of having a personal connection inside a brand, publication or agency. “Behind every pitch email, creative deck, and fee negotiation is a friend from uni,” says stylist Myles Mansfield-Calenti, from CSM’s class of 2024. “Having that network in an often isolated and competitive industry is incredibly important to me.”
“I met some of my best friends and colleagues at university, and others on my way home from university,” says designer and art director Frederic Saint-Parck. “It’s not the end-all-be-all, but it’s a great place to start. I had my collection in LFW last year, rented out a chapel in west London, and everyone involved was UAL-related.” As an Art Director, Saint-Parck finds that a lot of the people he works with are fellow alums. “They may not be directly from my year group or even decade, but there’s a relationship there that can be appreciated.”
Fashion can be a very intimidating industry, and, as a young person starting out, knowing someone on set, at a show or on the door of an event can make a huge difference. Plus, it’s not just useful when applying for jobs to have an ex-classmate in the organisation; it might make the job itself more enjoyable, too. Nothing quite sets you up for this like attending a fashion school in London. Still, quantifying exactly how much that is worth is not easy when three years of university don’t 100% guarantee this. Maybe just sneak into the CSM student bar instead?
