The fabric is subject to her inquisitive fingers. The artful stitching is deconstructed in her mind. I could make that ,she snorts.. She visits the fashion boutiques in Covent Garden and Soho and searches for the cheapest fabric in East London and Shepards Bush.
Alexander McQueen and Hussain Chalyan are among her idols. She subscribes to a website that predicts fashion trends several seasons hence. 'Eighties' style, vulgar and tasteless, is in and will be for some time to come.
Her friends ask her to make or improve an item of clothing for them. A plain white top will be transformed into a dazzling, sexy, off-the-shoulder , rhinestone-adorned jewel. Her hands wield a sewing needle with dexterity as she frowns over her latest assignment.
For inspiration, she visits art galleries and reads books with titles such as "Fetishism in Contemporary art". The fashion student is expected to be au fait with current trends in fine art . A recent nominee for the Turner Prize used textiles as his medium. She reads ID, the fashion magazine and searches for obscure French titles.
She is depressed by provincial cities where everyone wears clothes two seasons out of date. She yearns for the turbulence and experimentalism to be found in the big fashion cities- London, Milan, New York, Paris and Tokyo. Maybe one day, after she graduates, she will work for one of the big fashion houses- Prada, Chloe, Versace and their ilk.
At the student fashion show, daring ideas floated down the catwalk on the frames of inexperienced models. The theatrical and the practical were represented. The colourful and the outlandish. The students admired each others work with a mixture of admiration, envy, contempt and awe.
One day, the impressive ebony and ivory legs of supermodels may carry her creations down the catwalks of Paris and Milan and the newspapers will search for superlatives with which to describe them. She will appear at the end of the show, surrounded by those towering ladies to the tumultous cheers of the audience, her days as a fashion student fading into the past.