2nd Graduate Mentoring Event Today

Today VFS is holding the second edition of the mentoring for our Graduate Showcase designers.  


Last September Vauxhall Fashion Scout hold the Graduate Showcase during LFW to great success.  It featured 10 recent graduates from Central Saint Martins, London College of Fashion, Royal Academy of Art and Westminster University and, as well as showcasing the best new talent, the initiative is designed to help these talented graduates take the giant step from graduation to setting up their own business.

The graduates include Nicola Morgan, Anna Smit, Patrick Li, Helen Turner, Charlotte Barry, Nova Chiu, Steven Tai, Parsha Geryesh, UmeRomaan & Victoria Spruce

This new initiative has the full support of the BFC and the Mayor of London’s office.

You can see how the showcase took place by clicking here.

As a follow up to the showcase we will be running a day-long mentoring event with guest speakers from across the industry to provide key information on setting up a business, staffing and management, PR, Sales, branding, funding and production.

The event will be informal and take the form of a TV chat show. For each topic area there will be two guest speakers from either side of the business with a question and answer session at the end.

The talk is designed to provide the graduates with the key information needed to approach buyers, position collections, sales contracts, payment terms and general advice

The schedule for this day, will go through all the different areas of a business, or at least the key ones: Press and PR, Planning and developing a brand and a collection, pricing and sales, recruitment and employment. 

VFS backstage by Guido Benedicto

Even with next season fast approaching, we are still enjoying footage from last Fashion Week. Armed with his camera, guest blogger Guido, who defines himself as an author with a camera, went behind the scenes backstage at the Dans La Vie show.

The short video gives an insight into backstage at a London Fashion Week show and shows the final touches from sponsors Toni&Guy and The Body Shop just before the models hit the runway.  

Elegantly edited, this video has a delicate musical background, giving a beautiful and calm point of view of what is in fact a hectic moment providing a different and personal point of view.

Enjoy it here!

VFS Mentoring Events At Beach Blanket Babylon

Vauxhall Fashion Scout is delighted to announce a new partnership with Beach Blanket Babylon who will be the official venue for Vauxhall Fashion Scouts acclaimed Mentoring Events.

“A key element to Vauxhall Fashion Scoutʼs initiatives, is a bespoke mentoring programme for highly talented designers. It is our objective to help them to establish their own creative businesses and to ensure they remain sustainable.” Martyn Roberts, Vauxhall Fashion Scout Founder.

For that reason VFS will re-launch a new series of intensive mentoring sessions featuring guest speakers from across the industry to provide key information on setting up a business, PR, Sales, branding, funding, sponsorship and production.

Previous speakers have included the British Fashion Council, Browns, Selfridges, Relative MO, Blow PR, Centre for Fashion Enterprise, Vauxhall Motors, ASOS, The Shop at Bluebird and PPQ.

Shoreditch ́s most renowned bar, Beach Blanket Babylon is the perfect venue. Itʼs a Chic space with a modern twist, and Vauxhall Fashion Scout will be taking over the gallery space, making it perfect to host the new series of mentoring events. The events will kick off in November and will provide access to unrivalled information from key industry experts on business areas such business development, sales, press, production, sponsorship and funding.

Utilising an old Victorian warehouse on Bethnal Green Road, BBB encapsulates the bohemian decadence of Cool Britannia. Beach Blanket Babylon Shoreditch provides the perfect backdrop for a dining or drinking experience which is not just out of the ordinary, but extraordinary.

Visit Beach Blanket Babylon webpage to get more info about them and their events here. 

Malene Oddershede Bach on the spot light. BoF

Every month, Business of Fashion selects an up-and-coming designer for an exclusive review. This month, the BoF Spotlight shines its light on Vauxhall Fashion Scout´s Ones To Watch designer, Malene Oddershede Bach, who according to Katharine K. Zarrella, the journalist behind the review, her "unexpected prints stood out at Vauxhall Fashion Scout’s ‘Ones to Watch’ show this season". 

Unconventional colour palettes, sculpted shoulders and misplaced arm slits sum up Malenes distinct style for the season and were so notable in the review:


Oddershede Bach’s spring colour palette of electric pink, turquoise, yellow and black — “it’s always important to have a few black pieces,” said the savvy newcomer — was inspired by psychedelic films, specifically Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void, while unconventional details like sculpted shoulders and deliberately misplaced arm slits were influenced by the uneasy, psychological horror films of David Cronenberg. “The shoulder details come from the idea of the self not feeling complete,” said Oddershede Bach.

But not only those details captured BoF´s attention. Her digital prints are considered to be the most promising from her collection, and one of them has been creatively used to customize the webpage logo. Malene said about her prints:  “All my prints are created by repeating images of organisms normally invisible to the human eye, which the viewers can interpret in their own way.” 

In November, Oddershede Bach’s work will be stocked by new online retailer Silkfred — which describes itself as a “social shoptending community for designers” — with more stockists on the way.

Get the full story from this months BoF´s Spotlight designer here.


You can also have a look at Malene´s profile on the VFS webpage here.