Fabric Sourcing - London

London Trip

The fabric sourcing trip to London was incredible. To be honest I think that sentence sums up the day nicely, but there is reasoning behind it. I love London – always have, always will. I love the atmosphere, the complete frenzy of the people who live and work there, the enormous versions of the shops, the fact that I know the tube routes like the back of my hand and of course the pretty fantastical fabric shops! Seriously I’ve never seen so much fabric in my life – the stores were like the chocolate factory in Willy Wonka, with crazy fabrics exploding out from every corner.

We had to research and get samples of stretch/performance fabrics, which was pretty easy I felt. I picked up the basic Lycra’s and Jerseys and threw in PVC and velvet for kicks; although I can’t ever imagine wanting to wear sportswear made of velvet! The samples were incredibly expensive and the fabric shop owners were obviously not that keen on students but it was completely worth it.

I loved the area of London we visited – Berwick Street – because it was jam packed with loads of retro and vintage shops and once we’d finished collecting samples we had time just to meander through them. We hit Oxford street on the way back to the V&A museum which is always awesome and then stopped off to see the Dale Chihuly sculpture in the entrance hall of the museum, which Sarah had told us about. To be honest, even though it’s incredibly striking, I really wouldn’t want to be working beneath it…

And even though the samples were expensive and we only spent a few hours in the city, I can’t wait for the next trip!