In the Middle
Sarah Jun Ashford-Brown: A Force to be Reckoned with Fashion Print Editor Iona Tompkins interviews Leeds student Sarah Jun Ashford-Brown before she embarks on a five day shoot in Paris showcasing local independent brands. Hi Sarah, thank you so much for taking the time to let us interview you! How would you like to introduce yourself to our readers who haven’t heard of you yet?
Photographed by Corinne Day
My name’s Sarah and I’m originally from Paris. I came to the UK when I was sixteen for boarding school, mainly because I didn’t enjoy the education system in Paris. It’s really as soon as I came to the UK that I started showing an interest in fashion, as everyone’s so open to anything here, so I started becoming more open to my own style and trying new things. Once I’d finished my A levels, I decided I couldn’t go back to Paris and I wanted to stay here and so I ended up in Leeds! As I still didn’t know what I wanted to do, I chose culture and media studies as it’s quite a broad degree and would allow me to have more time to figure out what I wanted to do. Last year I did a year in industry in Paris at a fashion agency called KCD as a showroom assistant and then a three-month placement at the Cannes films festival as a digital communications assistant, both experiences from which I learnt a great deal. How would you define your creative practice? Do you specialise in any particular fields? I have lots of ideas, but I can’t sew or edit too well, and my photography is still very basic. I’m in the process of learning how to do a bit of everything right now. I would say my journey really started with the Gryphon newspaper actually, I modelled for an editorial and this experience exposed me to the world of fashion and got me meeting all sorts of interesting people. In second year, I was a stylist for the Leeds RAG fashion show and that’s how I became properly connected with a creative community within Leeds. Essentially, I guess you could say my creative practice is me procrastinating my university work through organising photo shoots! Working with Leeds RAG gave me a great network of small brands situated around Leeds so now I have a network across the UK I try to keep in touch with. I’ll contact them and they’ll send me some of their clothes for me to organise a shoot around. I get in touch with friends who are photographers, stylists and makeup artists and we all come together to make the shoot happen. I basically give people my ideas and they make them look fabulous! The project you’re embarking on in Paris sounds incredibly exciting, would you like to tell us how it came about? Yes of course! In my second year I was suffering a lot from anxiety attacks which is something I’d never experienced before. As a result, I started associating this anxiety with Leeds and began to dislike the city because of it. But I still loved my course, and so instead of changing university I just took the year out in Paris I mentioned before. I loved this year and I got to meet so many incredible people, including Anna Wintour. My placement at Cannes film festival was also pretty star-studded, when I met Robert Pattison the twelve-year-old twilight fan inside of me was freaking out. When I came back to Leeds I felt really motivated to be as creative as possible and add as much as I could to my CV. I’m not sure what’s changed, but since coming back I love Leeds again. The Paris project came about because I was missing Paris and I thought it was a shame to leave my beautiful home unused. I contacted some of my friends in Leeds and managed to get together an all female team of creatives. So we’re going for four or five days to shoot in Paris, with no one being paid but we’ve managed to get some funding for our Eurostar tickets by a company who’s sponsoring the trip.
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Within the shoot you’ve chosen to spotlight four brands: Limpet Store (embroideries), Just Harry Designs (recycled denim), Girl With Pearls (handmade hair accessories) and Out of this World Clothing. Would you like to explain to our readers why you picked each of these brands and what makes them special? I met Harry from Just Harry Designs a few weeks ago and we just got along really well, and I especially like the fact that it’s all sustainable clothing. I tend to prefer working with independent brands because my placement industry exposed me to how unsustainable most major fashion brands are. My relationship with Limpet Store actually goes back a long time - they were the first brand I ever organised a shoot for way back in second year. Girl with Pearls I discovered through Limpet Store as they worked on a collaboration together. She’s based somewhere in Germany and has been great in sending me a bunch of different pieces to play around with in the shoot. Out of this World Clothing I actually also met through Limpet Stores, and they were just immediately on board with the whole project and concept. I’m really excited to be working with an all-girls team, I love working with boys too but I’ve done so many more projects with just girls that now I’m very used to that setup.
