Graduate Fashion Foundation and Fashion Minority Alliance launch the new 'Colouring Fashion' book celebrating diversity & inclusion

Colouring Fashion : The Intersection Between Art & Career

Graduate Fashion Foundation are pleased to announced the launch of ‘Colouring Fashion’, the first fashion focused colouring book created to encourage a richly diverse future of the fashion industry from grassroots level, produced in collaboration with Fashion Minority Alliance as part of the Fashion Futures project.

Highlighting inspiring and pioneering designers, photographers, models, stylists, makeup artists, hairdressers, art directors and editors, amongst others, the ‘Colouring Fashion’ colouring book contains 22 inspired plates ready for the young recipients to unleash their own creativity within. From groundbreakers to newcomers the colouring book is a celebration of creative icons of the industry including Edward Enninful, Pat McGrath, Priya Ahulwalia, Ibrahim Kamara, Rei Kawakubo, Grace Wales Bonner, Charles Jeffrey, Aaron Rose Philip, Telfar, Campbell Addy and Stephen Burrows amongst others. The book also features QR codes taking the reader to the new Graduate Fashion Foundation Fashion Futures website, Career Pathways Hub and downloadable educational resources.

The colouring book will be launched through 100 junior and secondary schools across the UK, on 26th September 2022 with the Colouring Fashion Challenge, challenging students to enter their creations on social media under #GFFColouringFashion. Addtionally a series of live school colouring workshops and panels talks will take place this autumn in select schools with special industry guests in attendance.

Each dynamic black and white illustration has been created by designer, illustrator and winner of the Graduate Fashion Week 2021 FACE Black Excellence Prize Joy Julius, and the inspiring accompanying text designed to educate on the variety of career pathways within the fashion industry, is written by Graduate Fashion Week 2021 Fashion Publication Award Winner India Gill. Graduate Fashion Foundation Global Ambassador and long-time support of the charity Iain R Webb also helped shape the project.

Graduate Fashion Foundation Director and Head of Special Projects Nicola Hitchens says; “Graduate Fashion Foundation wanted to create a vaulable and eductional asset perfect for UK schools to join the vital diversity and inclusion conversation. The GFF Colouring Fashion colouring book celebrates creatives making a difference in the fashion industry and inspires young students from all backgrounds to follow in their footsteps down the multiple career pathways open to them and not just fashion design. We aim to help facilite the opening of new talent pipelines into the industry at grassroots level and inspire studying the arts in higher education. It has been a pleasure to work with fresh talent and GFW Award Winners Joy Juilus and India Gill within this project, to amplify their incredible talents and enthuse a new generation.”

Founder of Fashion Minority Alliance, Barbara Kennedy-Brown says; “We wanted to create something meaningful and celebratory that shows people from all backgrounds that there is room in the industry for them. Having created a variety of workshops with schools it was clear that there is a need to highlight the many different roles that make up the fashion industry. There is an assumption, particularly with younger people, that being in fashion is a singular role and we wanted to create a vehicle that shows some of the ecosystem. Joy Julius’ beautiful illustrations will no doubt inspire future generations of talent and help encourage a richly diverse pipeline”.

GFF Colouring Fashion Illustrator and Designer Joy Julius says: "Being a part of a project that helps promote representation and diversity in the fashion industry and inspires young students by giving them the possibility to learn about the brilliant artists through illustrations was such an exciting opportunity. The most important step of illustrating for me, was understanding the essence of the message behind a brand and finding the right poses and attitude that fits. First through rough sketches and then finalising the illustration."

School library donations of creative books from Woolmark, Mulberry and Intellecent Books plus colouring kits will accompany the distribution of the colouring books, with colouring supplies by icons of creativity Derwent. “We at Derwent are hugely honoured to be collaborating with Fashion Minority Alliance and Graduate Fashion Foundation on this project. Our mission is to delight artists and inspire them to keep discovering which is why we are proud to support with art products as part of Fashion Future's colouring book project, with the hope to encourage BPoC and marginalised youngsters to consider the fashion and creative industries as career paths. We can’t wait to see the beautiful artwork created with these colouring supply kits!”

The Colouring Fashion initiative falls under the Fashion Futures collaboration created between Graduate Fashion Foundation, the charity behind Graduate Fashion Week, the world’s largest showcase of BA fashion talent, and Fashion Minority Alliance, the Non-Profit organisation that works collaboratively with businesses, brands, organisations, and industry gatekeepers to promote and secure the advancement of BPoC and historically marginalised creatives. Fashion Futures is funded by PVH Corp under its US$10million #9 initiative which aims to amplify new career opportunities in the fashion industry from grassroots level.