Kingston University Fashion MA students give the Clifford Chance graduate hoodie a makeover

Posted Wednesday 1 April 2015

A Fashion MA student displays her design Inspired by the catwalk show at Kingston University's London Fashion Week show, the graduate recruitment team at law firm Clifford Chance commissioned MA Fashion students to come up with a fresh new look for their ‘graduate hoodie' design.

Thirty students took part in a sponsored project to capture the spirit and essence of the Clifford Chance brand in a new sweatshirt design for their 2015 intake of graduate recruits.

The brief was to produce three ranges of six designs. A ‘concept range', pushing the boundaries of the design process; a ‘diffusion range' distilling ideas into a marketable store ready product and an ‘off the shelf' range that could be manufactured by Clifford Chance for a £25 per unit cost.

Eleven finalists exhibited at a showcase event on the 30th floor of Clifford Chance's Canary Wharf building on Friday - to an audience of over 200 members of the Clifford Chance community, from senior partners through to trainees.

The winning designs were decided via a vote which took place on the Clifford Chance UK graduate Facebook page with Marjade Roniet and Nikki Diep's proposals garnering the highest number of votes. Marjade's designs will be used to create a new line of merchandise that will be available across the entire Clifford Chance firm and Nikki's design will be used primarily for the 2015/16 Graduate Marketing Campaign.

Kingston Fashion have been working to secure corporate sponsorship for their programmes, exploring the university's alumni links to unlock new funding opportunities. "It's been a great project for the students to work on, they have excelled in many ways," says course director Andrew Ibi. "These kind of creative, professional industry projects are important for our 'sponsorship' portfolio."

$The Fashion MA students\' work on display at the Clifford Chance offices$

Laura Yeates, a Kingston University Business graduate, and Head of Graduate Talent at Clifford Chance said "We are delighted with the execution of the project and the results exceeded all initial expectations. The students were professional, engaged and understood the commercial brief."