Salwa’s cultural collection to take to the Graduate Fashion Week catwalk

Graduate Fashion Week has been firmly established as the world’s leading event for fashion graduates, and 15 of our students will be showcasing their collections on the catwalk as part of the celebrations.

This year, Graduate Fashion Week takes place between Saturday 30 May and Tuesday 2 June at the Truman Brewery in Shoreditch, with the University of Northampton’s catwalk show taking place on Monday 1 June.

In the run-up to the big show, we’re featuring our students who have been selected to showcase their designs on the catwalk. Today, we hear from Fashion student Salwa Al-Habsi: “My collection has been inspired by Omani culture and our traditional costume. I wanted to modernise traditional costumes and so I began with focusing on the old fashioned garments and started to play around with the colours and silhouettes in order to put my own touch on them. I began with focusing on the traditional Bedouin face veil and started to create shapes for my garments.

The traditional costumes only use primary colours so I have picked something that wasn’t accepted years ago, that people would wear now and have played around to create different shapes and structures. I like to work with all fabrics, but prefer heavier weight as it allows me to create structured shapes.

I decide to get into fashion after I did a short course and enjoyed the designing and making of garments. I got scholarship from Omani government to study in the UK and so I ended up joining the Fashion programme at the University of Northampton.

I would love to have my own brand back at home once I have graduated.”

Find out more about the students involved with Graduate Fashion Week.