the toile review.
A podcast that creates open conversations with wide-range of creatives from the fashion industry, to pause and review their paths and give advice to aspiring fashion creatives drawing from their own experiences.
Created for early creatives, the podcast aims to give you an immediate taste of how our experiences as students and early-career professionals can support your personal, creative and professional journey. Our guests will be from across the fashion and creative industries from different backgrounds, who value raw, honest, and insightful conversations on careers in fashion and experiences. We talk about education, internships, race, careers and mental health within the fashion industry. Nothing is off limits.
Produced and hosted by Navneet Virk, who is an early career artist and designer. After her time in education and in her professional career, she has developed a network of interesting creatives working within the industry, all who have taken very different paths. Now she is bringing these people together to create a podcast that she wishes would have existed in her time as a student and early creative, to give exposure to real experiences, insights and advice to different paths that are available within the creative industries.
the toile review.
ep.0 trailer - welcome to the toile review
Welcome to your toile review. Welcome, JQ to your toile review. Welcome, Emma to your toile review. And I kind of didn't look at any other courses. It was like, right? Yep. Fashion. That's me. That's where I'm going to go to. You know, I thought Saint Martin's is going to be a bit more floaty a bit more conceptual based, and it is. But kind of looking back, definitely. But 100% Third year did almost, like, traumatized me a little bit, just with the amount of work. But 100% I think that with the government that we have now are totally unsupported of creativity, any arts degrees just cut 50% of the funding again, like, obviously, they think nothing is designed in this world. It's difficult to be in this country now and be a creative and be financially supported, be able to grow in that sense. But as the course went on, I found the people that kind of reflected the values that I have, and I built these really strong friendships, and it then became a thing of the groups, the people I was hanging around with. We all kind of have our strengths and weaknesses. So we'd help each other out. And I think that at University level is so important that you make those connections with people. Otherwise, I don't know for me personally, it kind of made me feel like I wouldn't have got through the degree, like, the friends that I made kind of supported me. And I feel like a lot of people I'm friends with now are friends for life. Graduate Fashion Week. That was a bit more like everyone for themselves sort of thing. And at the end of the day, it was up to the tutors. So those girls that have kind of made themselves, like, the favorites were definitely treated better when it comes to Graduate Fashion Week. Yeah. He was horrible, widely widely known that he was a horrible person. And I don't think he came back after the second year because people left crying, people left in floods of tears because he just cut them down. Because none of the tutors really understood where I was coming from or where my perspectives were kind of going. There was no one kind of in my corner going, like, yeah, that's really cool. Keep going with that idea. Tiktok was pretty much where it all, like, took off. And I actually love TikTok. Like, people think TikTok is like the demon, but I actually preach TikTok to everyone. Every small business and every creative person should be on TikTok. I feel like they've become very critical. So for me, as I said, I felt like I got a lot of negative feedback, but I would see it sometimes that before the a student had even opened up their sketchbook or opened it or showed their toile, they'd be like, oh, my God, we saw that really good toile from last week, and they would be really positive from the offset. And it was almost like, Where's that energy for me? What's going on? You have not even seen my sketchbook, yet. Things might have changed, so I don't want to say there was favoritism, but I think that within education, it happens a lot without realizing. And even if you don't intend to do it, it happens. Sustainability was something that was whispered. But people didn't really either want to listen because it was an annoyance or it was something that I think people just completely believed in. So it's very like opposite side. And I think that is something that a lot of people don't talk about enough is the financial side of fashion. How fashion degree is very, very expensive. And she quite openly said in the start of it. But, yeah, we don't want you to have jobs. We don't want you to be working if you do. It's a four, five, six hour week job, but it was so unsustainable for most people that I was friends with. So that brings us to the end of your toile review, Emma. oh, my God. How did it feel? Definitely less stressful than the toile reviews at uni.