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This is the Business Village People podcast.  Hello, I'm David Markwell and welcome to the Business Village People podcast. This is episode four of series two. This podcast showcases stories from the companies, service providers, and staff at the business village, in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. Well, if you're ready, let's go!

 

In this episode of Business Village People, we meet a woman who was more impressed with her education from a local college than the one she received from a tuition-paying university.  According to the United Nations, the top five emitters of greenhouse gases are China, the USA, India, the European Union, and the Russian Federation.

 

That accounts for about 60 percent of the emissions in 2021. We'll be discovering what help is available to you to reduce your carbon emissions in your workplace, with a little bit of help from the business village. Also, we meet the brand new members executive for the Barnsley and Rotherham Chamber of Commerce.

 

It's time to meet our first guest. Laura Fish owns Fashion Toolbox, a company that is bridging the gap between traditional education and modernity and the ever-evolving world of fashion design. Fashion Toolbox is a little bit of a long story because it didn't start out as what it is today. It started out as an idea as part of my master’s, and I was working in the fashion industry for a very, very long time.

 

I think it was around 15 years.  And  when I got into the industry from university, I realized that there was a little bit of a skills gap, shall we say, and that I wasn't really prepared for everything that I needed to know within the industry. I've got to do a lot of learning on the job. When you say that, what do you mean?

 

Because you've, you've just did a master's degree. Is that right? I did my BA first. Right. Okay. You've done your BA first. You've come out. ready to be working in the fashion industry, but you felt as though you were lacking certain skills. Yeah, I would say more like the technical skills. I did learn a lot.

 

I learned a lot about fashion design and pattern cutting.  But then when you're in the industry, industry. There's so many different roles that I felt like I wasn't even informed about, to be honest. And how did that make you feel? Because you've just spent three years and got probably into a lot of debt to come out and not be able to do the job you wanted to do.

 

Yeah, I'm quite frustrated. I mean, I was, I did get into the job that I wanted to do, but I felt like there was a lot of learning on the job to do and a lot of upskilling, which was quite frustrating. Yes, obviously, after spending all that money, then it was a little bit of, I did courses here and there in my own time to learn, particularly in like digital skills, Adobe Illustrator is massively required within the industry.

 

And I just didn't, I wasn't taught it. So I think I had one lesson while I was in university.  So I taught myself, um, pretty much. And then, yeah, when I asked others, they felt pretty much the same way. They didn't have the skills. So when I worked in the industry for quite a few years, as I said, and then this became a real like passion project thinking there's all these people that haven't got the skills that we need to join forces and upskill.

 

So when I went back to do my masters.  I decided to focus particularly in fashion education and did a heck of a lot of research into the history of education, how it's evolved over time or not evolved. And I guess this is, um, I'm generalizing in a way because I looked majorly at the UK and the fashion education system here, but there are, um, other areas that Doing a lot more to support students and bring more innovation and digital skills on board, but within the UK I found that it was quite lacking and to be honest at that time  so I built Fashion Toolbox, which was Originally, it was a podcast  So I interviewed people.

 

I'll have no more of that then, quite frankly.  Yeah, so I interviewed people from the industry in various roles. Roles that hadn't really been discussed  at university.  I basically asked them what their role involved and tried to educate people from that side of things. And I wanted Fashion Toolbox to be a platform where people could come and learn and upskill.

 

Okay, right. Let's just shut the back door a moment. Why fashion?  Oh. And what were you like at school?  I was a rebel at school. Were you?  Yeah, I was, I was a rebel. I, um, got in trouble a lot. In what way? I think I probably got in trouble a lot for, uh, My appearance, more than anything, I think that's where the whole fashion thing comes from.

 

How, how, how  did you used to go to school looking like? Was it like Charlie Carolli or, or a punk or a rebel? Yeah, a rebel, I would say. Like, I, I, Emo? Wearing way too much makeup.  Always dyeing my hair, which was not really allowed at school. My tie would be so undone. My skirt would be rolled up. Oh, gosh. So many pairs of socks that you can't even I mean, the fashions then were just ridiculous.

 

So many pairs of socks. You could only wear one pair at a time. What, on your legs?  Different hats. That's quite creative, though, I think. That's original.  That's, that's, that shows Not when everybody's doing it. Yeah, but they get hung up about uniforms and stuff, don't they? I'm in two minds with it, because I can see some kids might not be able to afford, or the parents, to afford the latest designer gear that everybody's after.

 

But also, I think it's a, it's a way of expression. Yeah, and, and, and And they put too many  Gates, in the way. Oh, and then you set fire to the school. I didn't do anything like that. That's not what I've heard. I did once, um, go and I picked up a for sale sign from outside the house and stuck it outside the school.

 

Okay.  I think we'd better stop it now.  So, which school is this, Kingston? Kingston, yeah. Yeah, okay. Anyway, you got over that.  The seed had been planted for you to work in fashion.  What happened next? So then I went to college. I went to Barnsley College and studied fashion on, I think it was a BTEC back then, a National Diploma, and learnt  I'd say that  probably my education at college was more informative than university, which is, um, yeah, it's not very good, but I learned a heck of a lot at college and, uh, really opened my eyes to what the industry would be like and what fashion was like.

 

All of the, um, the pattern cutting and everything I just found fascinating. I've always been interested in that side of things and how something 2D can. make something 3D, which is probably why I'm so addicted to what I'm doing now. Tell me about Fashion Toolbox. What is it? While I was doing my master's, I came across a software called Clo3D,  which is a digital fashion software.

 

And as soon as I saw the software, I thought this is going to be the next big thing in the industry. Like everybody before had to learn Adobe Illustrator to get on. And with Clo3D, I thought, yeah, this is going to be the next software and I've 100 percent got to learn it. So I did. I learned that as well as doing my master's and made it kind of part of the whole fashion toolbox project.

 

And thinking about how, um, Things would develop in the future in terms of both fashion education and the industry and then Fashion toolbox over the past couple of years has become a platform for it because I am majorly majorly Interested in sustainability as well So I like the tools like 3d fashion design can help companies save money reduce the carbon footprint and All by reducing sampling and, um, doing more like design iterations in real time.

 

So, um, I decided that this was what Fashion Toolbox would become. But what is it?  It's a I know