When I first heard about the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme I wasn’t sure if it was for me. It didn’t sound exactly ‘me’ to go hiking up the Pentlands and to do 3 months of charity work. Then, I heard about the Skill section and I started to take an interest.
I have always been interested in fashion design and I had drawn a few sketches at home. But I always felt it was pointless because no one was ever really going to see them. When I first turned up to the Duke of Edinburgh meeting I asked if I could do something related to fashion design for my Skill section. Nobody had really done anything like it before and the leaders were interested that I was doing something a bit different.
So what was it that I actually did? Every fortnight or so, I presented at the meetings a collection of about 6 or 7 designs that I had created that week. The leaders assessed them ,while I explained a bit about how I did the drawings and what my inspiration was. Normally, I would have a theme for my designs. For example, I may have done a collection of dresses that all featured the same type of fabric, detail and colour. For each collection , there was an ‘Inspiration’ page which featured a number of other designers’ work that had motivated me to do that particular set of designs. The leaders would then sign my log book and write a small comment. I did this for 3 months and at the end I did a big ‘finale’ collection which featured 10 or 11 designs with a simple backdrop.
I used a mixture of mediums to create my collection. I first started off with watercolour. I thought this technique, at first, was the most suitable as I could mix the paints to create unusual colours. As I progressed with the collections I realised that it was difficult to keep the drawings neat as watercolour is quite messy and difficult to use. So, I tried using brush pens. They didn’t come in such a range of colours like the watercolour paints but they created a unique texture. I have stuck with using the pens as it is the quickest, easiest and most effective way of creating the collections.
I learnt a lot from doing Fashion Design as my skill. It took me quite a while to do one design, therefore I only produced 6 or 7 every fortnight. I can now appreciate the amount of work that goes into creating a collection and I admire fashion designers of our day. I now feel as if I have had a ‘taste’ of the work fashion designers do except they go on to produce the finished article. I am very determined to develop a career in this field and I hope to achieve a lot from this experience. I had been keen to do the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme for a few reasons, one being it has been known to look good on your CV! As I want to pursue a career in this area, it has been especially helpful to have created a portfolio which will hopefully help me into a future career in Fashion Design. I have thoroughly enjoyed doing my Skill section and would do it again if I had the chance. When choosing what to do for your skill or any other part of the Duke of Edinburgh Scheme, think about what you are interested in and how you could turn that into a project. If you are interested in fashion, try doing what I did…it’s lots of fun once you get started and it’s definitely worthwhile.
