Wonderland

At the Overlap fashion show last month, Fashion Promotions student, Meg Shipley won an award for the Fashion in Film competition in partnership with UEDA college in Japan. I caught up with her to find out about the film and her prize that includes a trip to Japan.

Describe the concept of the film.
Ok, so the challenge was to make a short film featuring a garment designed by a student from UEDA in Japan to be shown at the London fashion show last week. I’m not going to lie, I was inspired by the work of fashion photographer Tim Walker - I went to an exhibition of his a week earlier and thought his stuff was pretty awesome. So I decided to go with a “Wonderland” theme - kind of Alice in Wonderland meets the Garden of Eden. I actually made up a lot of the film as it went on, but the overall idea was that the character would be wondering through a surreal place, eat a poison apple and turn into a mentalist!

How long did it take you to make?
In total, I spent a day preparing the set and filming, and then it took me a further week to put it all together.

You are on work placement at the moment, can you tell us who it is with and how you are finding it?
Unfortunately, I couldn't make the show as I’m on work experience and had to stay late. I’m working at Rizvi Millinery, basically making couture head wear which is pretty cool stuff! I love it, and my sewing skills are vastly improving even though I got a beast of a burn from the steamer yesterday.

When do you plan to take your trip to Japan?
I’m not sure when the trip is taking place but hopefully early next year. I actually can’t wait, Japan’s always been on my wishlish!

The film is part of the work you do on the Fashion Promotion course, tell us about the other topics that you study.
Making this film has prepared me for our next project brief, The Cut where it’s a similar concept. I think Fashion Promotion gets a bit of grief about being a doss course but it isn’t at all. We study the art of portraying fashion through styling, journalism and PR and it enables us to constantly stretch the imagination by making entire magazines, promotional films, and even organising events like Graduate Fashion Week.

What do you hope to do after the course?
I’m not sure what I’m going to do after the course, now I have a taste for film making we’ll have to see. Although working with a milliner has really inspired me to get more hands on so who knows?

You can check out the film, Wonderland above.