'Fab four' fashion students vie for title of top designer

'Fab four' fashion students vie for title of top designer

Clothes Show Live 2013 nominees (left to right) Jenna Baxter, Chloe Topp, Xin Shen and Alexandra Popoviciu.

Student news

Thursday 21 November 2013

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Four fashion students from Coventry School of Art and Design (CSAD) will be battling it out for the title of ‘Young Designer of the Year’ at the forthcoming Clothes Show Live Creative Awards.

The ‘fab four’ are amongst ten shortlisted finalists in the young designer category at the five day long festival of fashion, which takes place at the NEC in Birmingham from Friday 6 to Tuesday 10 December. They are Jenna Baxter, Alexandra Popoviciu, Xin Shen and Chloe Topp.

Launched in 1989 on the back of the popular TV programme and taking place at the NEC in Birmingham since 1990, the Clothes Show Live is the UK’s most celebrated fashion and beauty event.

This is the seventh year in a row that students from CSAD have made it to the final of the prestigious competition and the four nominees will be hoping to follow in the footsteps of fellow art and design school student Curtis Li who brought the title back to Coventry for the first time in 2012. Set with the task of producing an outfit inspired by a favourite fashion icon, Curtis wowed the judges at last year’s show with his futuristic garment influenced by punk rock star Siouxsie Sioux.

The brief for this year’s competition is to produce the perfect party outfit to celebrate to Clothes Show Lives’ 25th Birthday and the finalists are now putting the finishing touches to their designs in readiness for the fashion showdown in December.

Angela Armstrong, senior lecturer in fashion design at Coventry University, said:


We’re both delighted and proud that students from our fashion course have yet again made it to the finals of the Clothes Show Live.

It’s a fantastic event, which attracts the leading lights of the fashion industry. The standard of competition year on year is incredibly high so the girls have done brilliantly to make it this far.

I’m hopeful that one of them will bring the title back to Coventry for the second year running and I’d like to wish them all the best of luck. Each and every one of them would make a worthy winner.