sogno: Edinburgh Charity Fashion Show 2013

Very fortunate “accident” IMO – people love his weird rucksack thing. Taken with the canon 50 mm f/1.8 lens, which is not made for light conditions and moving objects like that. But when it works, the result is so much better than with the other lens (all other pictures)

So yesterday I went to see my first fashion show – yeeey! :) I just happened to read about it on the internet at the end of last week (and I’m wondering how that was possible. Since then I’ve been spotting advertisements at pretty much every corner around university…) and spontaneously bought my ticket. The Edinburgh Charity Fashion Show is an annual student organised Charity event, and this time they support Cancer Support Scotland and The Sandpiper Trust. Considering this, the 20 pounds for a regular ticket, weren’t as much of a hurdle, as they’d normally be for me. The show took place at the Assembly Rooms in George Street – a very impressive building at the heart of Edinburgh’s chic New Town. The whole event was very well organised, and a lot more “professional” than you’d expect from a students’ things. After the first part of catwalk presentation, we had a break, followed by charity auctions and the second part of presentations. I especially enjoyed the second part, without “disliking” the first part, of course. In the second part I liked the clothes better, the music was great and very well coordinated with the collections. And was it just me, or were the models walking like professional High Fashion catwalk queens then?

“Duality”, understood as a concept that is inherent to Scotland and the Scottish psyche, was the show’s theme. This duality is reflected by Scottish literature like Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, that were inspired by the contrast of Edinburgh’s medieval Old Town and the classicistic New Town. This duality doesn’t only exist in Edinburgh, but extends to the whole country. You have the chic and cultural Edinburgh contrasted to industrial Glasgow. The Highlands and the Lowlands. Even two languages in the South of the country – Scots and English (and Gaelic in the North). To hear more about this, take a look at the official website. And also go there to find out more about the designers and collections! It was a mix of established designers, and new talents from Scotland and the rest of Britain, that especially were to get a possibility to promote themselves. Among the established designers there were stars like John Rocha, Alice by Alice Temperley and Diane von Fürstenberg. Among the new shooting stars Eleanor Amoroso who recently graduated from the University of Westminster. One dress of her graduate collection, was on the cover of Volt magazine, worn by Alice Dellal.

I hope you don’t overly mind that I can’t tell you which collection every single piece is from. There was no break between the all together 12 core and several smaller collections in each part, the collection’s name was just projected on the wall. Writing this down and taking pictures was impossible. (I should have taken pictures of the wall, of course, how stupid….). I tried to track some looks back, but to be honest don’t have time to do that with all of them. After the show there was an after party somewhere in the city, but I skipped that, might have been weird, not knowing anyone. But at the show I really had a great evening, and I’m so glad that I went! There’s another students’ charity fashion show this week, and since I know one of the organisers, I might have the chance to get involved as a photographer. Since I have a presentation the very next day, and running very late with preparations due to my flu last week, I haven’t asked her yet and might not be able to go….

opening – in Eva Poleschinski

Gaby Cavanagh

One of my favourite outfits in terms of “what I would wear”. I also love the model’s expression and her very reduced posing. Many of the other girls’ poses were hard to take a decent picture of, for a non-professional photographer like me

…more…