When visiting London, Fashion Week was a-go. This seemed like a perfect opportunity to start some street styling and begin practising my street photography. It was a very interesting and helpful activity, however the chaos surrounding it was absolutely hectic. There were photographers being pushed over, cars being blocked due to mini photo-shoots happening on roads, groups of people running to one singular person, i had never seen anything so wild.
People were dressed in some really interesting clothing, it gave me a great insight into what the industry is actually about and i appreciate that wholeheartedly. There were a range of locations that we were able to visit during the time we were in London, these include… One experience i had which i find quite humorous was just before the Burberry fashion show. Me and Valerie assumed that the show would be inside rather than outside like we had hoped. Therefore we stood in a line for an hour and hoped that the security would have a soft spot for us and therefore let us in to photograph the show. However, of course, we got told to leave as soon as we got into contact with the security, at least we tried.
The atmosphere and the experience of the few days i spent photographing individuals were absolutely fabulous. I found that, as an photographer, i was fairly talented at finding individuals to photograph and getting to the forefront in able to capture the angles i wanted. (Images below shot by me, LFW).
During my time at fashion week, I made a lot of connections with a range of different people. This was so that whenever i may be in London, i will have people to connect with and later shoot. Most of these people came from a activist group by the name of Transmissions. This group of people were campaigning for more trans-inclusivity within the fashion world, whether this be more trans models, photographers or editors. I was in absolute awe of this movement.
Me and my friend Nicola had happened to stay back at Sommerset House after visiting a fashion exhibition with our peers. This was due to me being a museum shop fanatic and taking far too long to choose which books i wanted to buy, therefore taking us longer to get around each exhibition. Time was however in our favour, since most of our peers had already left. When me and Nicola finally exited the last exhibition, we found a large group of people in very high fashion outfits stood around the centre of the outside area. We soon realised that this was Transmissions on a protest for inclusivity. We were utterly thrilled, being the only individuals from our course to come into contact with the group so early on, we took the opportunity to take some photographs and ran with it.
The individuals themselves were very helpful during the shooting. Everyone was up for being photographed and each person posed like a pro, it was a young photographers wet dream, to put it lightly. We then learned that the movement was going to walk across to the main LFW building and protest there by doing some catwalks and chanting. This excited us even more as we headed to the area with the group. (photographs shown below, shot by me.)
In short, London Fashion Week was an amazing experience for an aspiring fashion photographer. It was an opportunity to test my confidence and conversation abilities which capturing pretty amazing pictures. I am absolutely thrilled that i got to be a part of this experience, getting to know others in the fashion industry and making connections was something that i know will help me later on in my career and will definitely come in handy. Me and Nicola are actually planning on attending again next year, whether this is with the university or just on our own accord. It is an experience that i wouldn’t want to have just once and it would also give me the opportunity to shoot with those whom i had spoken to this year.
ELL SIRS
ELL, FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY 