How on earth did I end up on a TV Show?
Do you want the real answer?
I felt like it was being manifested for me.
In early spring, I announced on Instagram that I’d achieved one of my biggest dreams. I didn’t share what it was, but I just said that I would reveal the secret in May. People started guessing the most amazing things, from doing a Ted Talk to becoming a pattern designer. Some people even suggested that I was going on TV!! I loved how big their dreams were for me. I could never have imagined such things.
Funnily enough, at the time there was a DM in my inbox telling me about the casting for a brand new show… Dress The Nation. That evening I decided to pop my application in, and on my 33rd birthday I got the call from the casting producer to say that I’d made it onto the show. It blew my mind! I was so incredibly excited.
The show is a contest to ultimately win the job as a fashion designer at Marks and Spencer. This is again something that is beyond my wildest dreams.
I’d been thinking about studying fashion design and pattern cutting for sometime, and I wondered whether it would be a good idea to get a degree in either of these subjects. I went to an open day at NTU at the beginning of the year to look at the courses. The prospects of getting a job in fashion even with a fashion degree were slim, so the pattern cutting course seemed like a safer bet. Spending over £30,000 to get a degree in the topic would need to pay off, so I had to be sure that I could make use of these skills myself, in my business, or in the fashion industry. The idea of designing garments for an actual fashion brand seemed like an impossible but wonderful dream.
Applying for this show truly felt like so many pieces were coming together. Here I was suddenly living out dreams bigger than I could ever imagine, and a door into the fashion industry could potentially be opening for me. As someone without a fashion brand, a fashion degree, and with very little design experience, this challenge was something that I perhaps wasn’t technically ready for, but I promise that I gave it my all. You’ll have to tune in to see if how far I got, and to see if I got that most incredible job!!!
Dress The Nation begins on Tuesday 17th September at 8pm on ITV1.
