As the organiser of Fashion Collective, Amad Malik knows a thing or two about running fashion events. Candice Wu caught up with him at the workshop.
Could you introduce yourself to our readers?
So, my name is Amad Malik, and I’m the founder of Fashion Collective. Fashion Collective is not a charity but an organisation that works with charities and works within fashion. We are not a business. We are a non- profit organisation, and the purpose is to, first, raise money for children’s charities. BBC Children in Need is one of the charities that we support, and the second is to provide a platform for designers and creatives to come together. We provide them facilities where they’re introduced to the right people, for example, business consultants because a lot of fashion people… they are creative and artistic, but they don’t have any fashion acumen. We can help them with that; building their products, expanding their brand, et cetera. That’s what we do. By profession, I am an IT consultant, so that has really nothing to do with fashion but that’s what I do.
“CREATIVITY, BEING CREATIVE, OR APPRECIATING CREATIVITY IS A HUMAN NATURE.”
How did you get into running these events, and what was the inspiration behind it?
It started as just a hobby as a fashion photographer and, also, my nephew, who is a teenager who lost his ability to walk. That’s how the charity element came in. My sister is a fashion designer and I do fashion photography as a hobby, so I thought that’s perfect. I can help my sister and my nephew and sort of like kill two birds with one stone. I got into fashion photography just because I come from a family of artists. My father was a painter. My sister was a painter, an artist, a sculptor, and a fashion designer, and she’s like extremely creative. I always thought I was the geek with no fashion or creative side to me at all and then I picked up the camera and really loved it. I loved the creative side, so that’s sort of how I got into it. I started photography maybe 2-3 years ago and have already been published in a few magazines. I maybe shoot like once a few months, but it’s something.
What does fashion mean to you?
Creativity, being creative, or appreciating creativity is a human nature. It’s a human desire. I think it’s very sad if you can’t, but I assume most people can. That’s what fashion represents to me. Fashion is not just all about buying clothes and wearing clothes. It’s not. For me, you have these designers and embroideries. It’s all very creative and artistic. Not just making the clothes. The process of conceptualities in the idea behind it and also presentation. It can be from very baroque to very glamourous to very minimalistic to very embroidered and embellished, and all that sort of stuff. It’s such a huge thing that people don’t even really realise until you really get into it and appreciate the artistic side and I think that’s what it all means to me.
What are your plans, going forward?
We aim to do at least one event a month and hopefully continue with that. We will continue to help and raise money for different charities. Obviously, my present empathy is for children’s charities because of my nephew, but I think we’ll just continue working with other charities as well. If we can keep on raising money for now, we have a target for September. A Just Giving page was set up which will go directly to BBC Children in Need, and we are collecting money and posting on it and sharing it. With our people doing some fundraising, we can continue to help other creatives, connecting and providing them a platform where people can come together, have fun, and progress, you know. Meet the right people and get pushed to success.
Find Fashion Collective online: https://f-c.london/
Just Giving Fundraising Page: https://www.justgiving.com/fund raising/fashion-collective- london
Images by Ian Clark
