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subscribe with RSSAs fashion week engulfs London, Sophie Atkinson manages to squeeze herself into Vanessa Denza’s jam-packed diary to talk to the renowned co-founder of Graduate Fashion Week.
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| Graduate Fashion Week, Mary Quant, Christopher Bailey's Burberyy (Click any image to enlarge it) | |
Denza embodies the very spirit of the self-starter. She began her career in the 60s as a fashion buyer for the Woodlands 21 Shop where she was self-taught, owing to the fact that there was little or no training for buyers available at this time – Vanessa ascertains that this was a profession thought of for elder women, not girls in their twenties. As a buyer, Denza travelled across the world – from France and Italy to the US. “I first started buying trousers from France in 1961, trousers mainly, when Sally Tuffin and Marion Foale first started making trouser suits.” Denza says, “Women didn’t wear trousers at this point. I used to go over to the factories and hand pick myself two or three thousand pair.”
Ater seeing what Italy, France and the US were achieving in terms of buying, Denza was spurred on to open her own buying office. This led to her discovering as yet unknowns, including Mary Quant, Ossie Clark and Jean Muir. By 1989 she had set up Denza International (her fashion recruitment agency), and went on to co-found Graduate Fashion Week (GFW), with designers Jeff Banks and fashion scout John Walford.
Denza, Banks and Walford’s aim was to promote and nurture the talents of today’s young fashion graduates, to give these graduates somewhere to effectively showcase the work which they had shed blood, sweat and tears over.
Today, over twenty years since its inception, GFW showcases the work of some 50 universities and attracts an incredible 33,000 visitors a year. GFW is, rightly so, world famous. Launching the careers of brilliant British designers Julian MacDonald, Antonio Baradi, Christopher Bailey and Stuart Vevers, it reinforces Britain as a creative hub and a major driving force behind international fashion – a far cry from its early days when they struggled to find a sponsor or venue.
While she no longer works directly with GFW, Denza maintains her strong links with fashion colleges in the UK, Europe and the Far East where she has taught, examined and helped to mentor, at BA and MA level, to ensure courses are up to scratch.
Vanessa is candid about her feelings towards fashion and education in the UK at the moment. She suggests that there are far too many fashion students in the UK and that the balance of quantity versus quality (citing, in particular, the problem of the ratio of pupils to tutors) needs to be readdressed. “What we need are designers who specialise in technical designing – such as denim or graphics of children’s wear.”
Vanessa stresses that while there are still a number of excellent training facilities for fashion in the UK, they are churning out too many womenswear designers.
Twenty years on from starting Denza International Limited, a specialist fashion recruitment consultancy, the name Denza is synonymous with high quality fashion recruitment. In 2003, Vanessa added another string to her bow by founding Denza Licensing. The aim was to represent a select number a designers across the board and build and maintain professional working relationships between designers and retailers – in relation to royalties and licensing. It was Denza Limited that brought us Celica Birtwell’s collection for Topshop.
Vanessa marks picking Christopher Bailey as the first winner of GFW as her finest personal achievement. On a personal level, she states that she most enjoyed her time working as a buyer in the 60s. “There was a feeling that everything was possible. We weren’t all laden with debt, had time to go out and enjoy life and wear new clothes and we had stopped worrying about what Paris said you had to wear. The freedom was inspirational.”
