Bryony Strange is a recent fashion graduate of the renowned Edinburgh College of Art where she spent 4 years honing her pattern cutting and design skills and living off of Tunnocks teacakes.

Throughout my final year at Uni I was fortunate enough to show at London Fashion Week in February as part of the Vauxhall Fashion Scout and F.A.D Fashion Futures Award. I also had work featured in both The Times, Scotsman, and The Metro as well as show my graduate collection at the Truman Brewery, East London as part of Graduate Fashion Week.

Since then, however I felt that I needed a bit of a break from the intensity of my final year and so decided to stay on in Edinburgh for a few months rather than move straight down to London with most of my peers. I already had a fair bit of experience working in retail and so I managed to secure a sales position at an upper market fashion store fairly quickly, whilst applying to more design and events related work. Unfortunately, Edinburgh doesn’t have the biggest fashion scene so there wasn’t a great deal of work available in those fields.

I worked my way around this however, and did a few voluntary styling jobs with local designers and small brands. Although the fashion scene in Scotland is relatively small it is also very supportive and a fairly close network. After following key players in the industry on social media, I came across a Managerial Retail and Events position with Scotland Re:Designed for a Limited Edition pop up store supporting new design and talent within Scotland. Although the position is still within retail (something I initially wanted to break out of) it has given me a great deal of confidence and responsibility and requires a great deal of initiative.

Working with Scotland Re:Designed has been a fantastic opportunity which has introduced me to so many key players within the industry both in Scotland and further afield. Now I have had some time away from design, however, I am itching to get back into it and so I am currently on the lookout for studios and design based residencies to create a new mini collection. One of the downsides to the fashion industry is that it can be difficult to break into a paid entry level job/internship and so I hope to gain a larger portfolio of work and experience before applying to assistant design jobs either in the UK or abroad.

I think there is always a bit of pressure to instantly move to London or that the perfect job will appear soon after you graduate, but unfortunately that’s never the case, in creative industries you sometimes need to be a little more proactive. I also think that there’s great potential and support for creativity, especially in Scotland.

Comment below or on Twitter using #LifeAfterArtSchool & mentioning @CenSta with your experience after art school.

Stay tuned for updates from art school graduates all this week. In the meantime see a preview of what to expect from the Life After Art School features here.

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Scotland Re:Designed is a fashion and textile based platform which seeks to connect Scottish born or Scotland based fashion designers and textile companies with the industry and media. At the same time the platform acts as a sustaining force providing support that enables designers and companies to take the next step with collaborations, sales, and PR opportunities.

Created by mentor and curator Chris Hunt of Genuine PR, the platform recently selected several fashion, textiles and accessory designers to exhibit at the upcoming Scotland Re:Designed Showcase in Glasgow. Featuring the addition of a new set of workshops and presentations, the Glasgow showcase will take place 19 – 21 November at SWG3.

Find out more about Scotland Re:Designed here.

More: Website | Facebook | Twitter

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For more creative delights we’ve Spotted on the web take a look here.

The Gray’s School of Art Degree Show will run from 21 to 28 June featuring work from this year’s talented graduates on the theme of ‘Open Your Eyes’. See fashion design, painting, photographic and electronic media, printmaking, product design, sculpture, visual communication and more. Works will also be available for purchase.

The Gray’s School of Art Fashion Show will take place on the 21 and 22 June. Find more information here and get your tickets here.

For a sneak peek see some of the photos from the degree show build here or watch the teaser trailer below:

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Please visit here for more Degree Show reviews on Central Station.

1. Trainee Machinist:
Lasted nearly the entire summer at ‘Traditional Weatherwear’ before my supervisor took me aside to inform me my constant questions were doing her nut in and that I should go to college. I’m very grateful to her actually, she knew someone at Cardonald College and two weeks later – I was a fashion student.

2. Design Assistant to the late Jim Macmillan, Head Pattern Cutter at Bruce Oldfield:
I put a card up in Safeway on Byres Road advertising a dressmaker’s dummy. Jim saw it and was curious about its owner. He’d just set up a studio in Glasgow and needed someone who could assist him with the designing, pattern cutting and sample making.

What Jim couldn’t pay me in cash, he paid in knowledge. I picked his brains and have notebooks of couture techniques and terminology. We’d often spend a whole hour discussing the pitch of a sleeve or the time he fitted Princess Diana/Joan Collins… Jim really made his business a success for a time and had a small factory operation going by the time I left.

3. Saturday girl:
Working for another Jim, this time, my former art teacher and owner of ‘Corners the Framers’ on Byres Road, Jim Quigley. A lot of very respected artists trusted Jim with their work and he had a big workshop in Scotstoun where all the framing was done.

He would put a print down in front of me and say “Right Marina, I want you to think about how you would frame this”. I learned never to choose a frame because it matched a room’s colour scheme! And that a mount or frame shouldn’t overpower the image or influence the composition, think I got it down in the end. He’s probably as close as I got to having a ‘mentor’ because however much I disappointed him, he still believed in me. Very sadly Jim passed away last year.

4. Fashion Show Choreographer and Producer:
I’d made a success of a few big shows in Glasgow and was asked to produce a Britweek showcase in Paris. We booked the ‘new faces’ from Models1 and Select who arrived in Paris from London the morning of the show, running order by 2pm, walk through by 4pm and on at 5pm. I reckon every show probably takes a week off your life!

5.Costume Maker & Designer:
After making a catsuit for Honor Blackman to wear in the title sequence of a TV show (with secret corseting inside which she loved!), people started calling me about costume work and somehow I wound up working on feature films. It’s incredibly hard work but very rewarding.

Once, on the last train home from the Greyfriar’s Bobby set in Stirling I overheard a couple talking about how much they loved the Hammer films. I had a little chuckle to myself because I’d just fitted Christopher Lee for his “Judges cloak”…

I now design and make couture wedding dresses and dabble in menswear. I designed a suit for Pete Doherty last year which you can read about ad nauseam on my blog Style Scanner.

I’m also excited to be collaborating with some of my favourite artists this year. Two of them are Central Station members, Mark Lyken and Omar Zingaro Bhatia.

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We’ve asked professionals in creative industries what jobs they have had in the past to get their foot through the door (or at least pay the rent). For more in the “My First 5 Jobs” series look here.

I have a couple of tables; one for pattern drafting, one for sewing. Empty jam jars are filled with bobbins, pins. Old chocolate and biscuit tins full to the brim with buttons. String and pegs create a washing line to hang materials of inspiration from. Images adorn the walls from different ethnic cultures and images from era gone by, historical costume and tear outs from fashion magazines.

I work from my studio full time using a range of different hand sewing techniques and pattern drafting skills. I love to drape fabric round the mannequin creating new forms and silhouettes. My studio is stacked full of Harris Tweed fabrics and a collection of treasures from around the globe.I collect vintage brooches, feathers and buttons to create new pieces to add to my jackets. A collection of shoes, socks for shoots are kept in boxes.

I receive packages through the post from my college Alison Macleod. She works on the Isle of Lewis producing handmade textiles. Her pieces bring new inspiration to the studio. I often have pictures on the wall by twin sister who is an artist which inspires new cloth combinations.

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‘Where I Make’ invites readers behind the scenes of artists from many disciplines to share photographs and a little insight about where they create their masterpieces. See more from the series here.