Fashion in focus

Year 10 GCSE Textiles students have been focussing on a children’s clothing project this term – researching, designing and making an item of clothing suitable for a 5/6 year old.

This Year 10 project is something that has been running, on an annual basis, for several years, providing the Year 10 GCSE group with the opportunity to hone their dressmaking skills on a small item, often using high level techniques such as piping and binding, as well as the chance to learn how collars go on and sleeves are put in.

One of the bonuses of Pipers being a “through school” is that the GCSE group have an eager batch of willing volunteers to try their creations out for them. Having made their design decisions based on things that children need in their clothes, such as durability and comfort, being able to test them out on a real 5/6 year old is invaluable to the evaluation process.

So that is how, this week, the Year 10 girls found themselves in Pre-Prep surrounded by the youngest members of the school community, trying on the outfits and giving their opinions on what they thought of them. The older girls asked their helpers questions like “How easy is it to take on and off?”, “Is it comfortable?” “Would you wear it to a party?”, “Is there anything you would change?” “What do you like best about the outfit?” They will now be using all of the responses to feed into their project evaluations.

Head of Textiles, Mrs Tebb, said “It is always a pleasure to visit Pre-Prep and have the girls try on the clothes made by Year 10. As well as gaining useful insight regarding their designs, the older girls are also reminded what it is like to be 5 years old again, with all the wonderful pleasures and freedoms that brings. For the Pre-Prep girls it is an opportunity to see what the older girls do and can achieve. This was brought into focus even more to me this week, when my A2 Textiles student, Jess Empson, remembered her visit to Pre-Prep in 2014. The little girl who tried her dress on, Tessa, is now in Year 4 and there is obviously a rapport and link between them that stemmed from the project - the picture below shows the pair in 2014 and then again today! This could only happen in an environment such as Pipers where we have the range of age groups able to interact on a daily basis, with girls communicating and learning from each other. How lucky we are!”