London Fashion Week, Ose Couture and Shi's Journey to Becoming a Fashion Designer

Hi guys!

Ose Couture @ Young Africa Fashion Weekend

Firstly, happy new year to one and all!!! No matter our new year's resolutions (or lack thereof) I think we all hope for an even better year than the last and so wishing for everyone (including myself) that this year WILL be even better than the last!!

I especially love this time of year, it’s an excuse for me to reflect on the good things that have happened at Shi Dolor Ltd through the year and plan for greater things this year. For me this year I reflected on how Shi Dolor started and how far I’ve come from apprentice to owning my own design label and thought I'd share how and why this transition came about and highlight the people that helped make it possible.

...So as you guys may already know from the interview I did with the Boss Style ladies I decided to pursue designing after I finished my degree in 2008 and initially the plan was go to back to university to study design for another 3 or 4 years!!!... I even landed an interview at the very Prestigious Insitituto Marangoni design school and aced the interview as I impressed them with my design knowledge and sketches... all was going well until the tuition fees were made clear...£30K!!!!! and like a member of the panel on Dragon’s Den I declared I’m out! ... Luckily my very good friend accompanied me to the interview and saw that I had my heart set on going to a design school (after all isn’t that the way it’s meant to be done?), but the reality is that any design school worth its salt will be asking for high tuition fees!... HOWEVER my friend reminded me that if you are talented there is more than one way to do what you want to do in life and that I should just think outside the box and with that I contacted the very talented and up and coming designer, Babs Atta-krah .

At the time Babs was getting ready to put her debut collection together for her own label Ose Couture for the Young Africa Fashion Weekend show as part of London Fashion Week June 2009. Anyone that knows Babs knows how warming and special she is. Babs had so much hands on knowledge to pass on to me because she wanted me to do well myself! (very rare to find that in such a cut throat industry!)...So I offered to help put her debut collection together, while shadowing and learning as I went along.

Here’s a sneak peak of behind the scenes footage of some of the production process of the Ose Couture collection filmed by MO-AM!! :)

It’s needless to say that I learnt so many important things through Babs; from putting together a professional sketch with specifications to blind hem stitching by hand, however the practical joker that Babs is her favourite task for me to do was to hand bead Swarovski crystals to her designs...the most time consuming and LONGEST task to do!!lol (one design took 2 days to bead, see pic below) but I picked up a love for genuine Swarovski crystals and incorporate them into most of my designs today.

Ose Courure hand beaded playsuit

Hand beaded Ose Couture signature gloves

The Young Africa show was a huge success and showcased other amazing designers such as Bunmi Koko and Tsemaye Binitie who have gone on to do great things.

Pride Magazine Press cutting of Young Africa Fashion Weekend

It was such an important experience for me as it threw me right into the middle of the business of fashion and so was the best way to see if this was the industry I really wanted to get into. In the end all the late nights, stress and hard work of completing collections, sticking to deadlines, dealing with press, models and event organisers was so worth it when watching the models on the runway wearing the fabulous clothes that Babs designed and created, it definitely cemented the fact that this was the career path for me.

Check out the highlights of the show!!

Signing off...

www.shidolor.com