Curated by Pathway Leader for BA Fashion Communication: Image & Promotion, Dal Chodha, and Adam Murray, Pathway Leader for MA Fashion Image, the launch of the exhibition gathered alumni and friends of the course to celebrate fifty years of sleek advertising campaigns, smart and witty writing, chic public relations, and more.
The BA Fashion Communication: Image & Promotion course was established in 1974 with a focus on journalism, under the collaboration of Felicity Green, Bobby Hillson, and Kathryn Samuel. The course flourished under the direction of Lee Widdows, who joined the college when Central School of Art and Design merged with St Martin's in 1989.
The exhibition featured archival projects made by the likes of Campbell Addy, Jeremy Langmead, Kay Barron, Holly Hay, Laura Holmes, Sharmadean Reid, Hanna Moon, Joyce NG, Jet Swan, IB Kamara, and more.
TANK Magazine, which has been a long-term partner of the course since 1997, hosted the celebration at its headquarters on Great Portland Street, coinciding with the launch of its Spring 2025 issue and the beginning of London Fashion Week February 2025.
This celebration is special for Dal Chodha, who himself graduated from the programme in 2006. “My experience of the school, the course, and the network that it has afforded me made this a really important thing to get right,” he says.
The staff had many different ideas about how to celebrate the milestone, but the real challenge was providing a comprehensive snapshot of the work produced over five decades.
“We have around 10 or 20 per cent of our undergraduates exhibited, and there are so many others who perhaps have not been as easy for us to find, or who have had a career shift, or who are doing other things that we can't necessarily talk about,” Chodha comments.
The course has changed in many ways over time, especially in terms of technology. “There are so many more shortcuts to a lot of the processes that you see in the exhibition,” Chodha reflects.
For him, it is fascinating to observe where people spend their time, and he believes it is crucial to recognise that magazines, films, and videos can also be regarded as important material legacies.
“Often, we think of magazines as being very disposable,” Chodha says. “Even if they are titles that you buy twice a year and maybe they're expensive, we still see paper as something that is not really meant to be around forever.”
This idea is explored through exhibiting work that likely hasn’t been looked at since it was made. “When you study, you make a piece of work; that work finishes, and then it goes under your bed, or it stays on a hard drive, or it goes in the attic at your parents' house,” he says.
When finding materials for the exhibition, the team had to be strategic about when to approach alumni. “We spoke to everybody before Christmas because we knew that lots of people might say, ‘Well, I'm going up to my mum and dad’s, I think I've got it in there,’” Chodha recalls.
Overall, the exhibition features 61 alumni, with the oldest piece of work dating back to 1988 and the newest published just last year. Chodha also reveals how some alumni were shy to share their projects: “Maybe they were a very different version of who they've become now, but it was very interesting to think about the psychology behind this messaging,” he reflects.
The new cohort of students is emerging into a completely different industry than before, both socially and politically. “A lot more of our discussions go outside the printed page because the way we consume information, where we see pictures, and how we want to experience fashion is so much broader now,” Chodha explains.
“I'm always really resistant to any kind of too much forward-thinking and planning because that is something that the fashion industry has often failed to do,” he says, explaining how hyper-focusing on the future often causes anxiety for many students. “More than anything, it’s just confirming my own philosophy of actually being very present,” Chodha says.
Because so many things happening today are confounding and complicated, he believes it’s important to honour and try to work those out before starting to think about the future. “Maybe our future isn't so positive, and that's okay – only if we can understand what is positive about today,” Chodha reassures.