Talkin' About... Navigating the Fashion World with Kelly Dearsley Strange - Episode 41

Our guest this week is Kelly Strange, who has worked her way through being a student to becoming the Associate Dean at London College of Fashion (UAL). She was born in London but grew up in Hertfordshire, but living in Hertfordshire didn’t suit at all, so she begun dressing in a London style to show how much she needed to be there, she is very much a city girl. After leaving school, Kelly went into advertising, working with lifestyle and entertainment brands, after a short stint there she went to study her degree in photography, but studied at a fashion university. After finishing her degree, she became fashion photographer, but quickly noticed she much preferred the academic side of the industry and couldn’t handle the anxieties of freelance life. So after a couple of years of being freelance, she went to Goldsmiths to do a masters in Image & Communication theory and practice, she was the only person in her masters doing fashion and it was there she got offered a job at South East Essex College. Kelly became a teacher in contextual studies on a photography course at SSEC, teaching on a Higher National Diploma course on Further Education and soon became course leader, having never done this before- it was a 3 day a week position. After being course leader for a while, she then actually wrote a degree course for SSEC and ran it. At the same time London College of Fashion asked her to do some lecturing on her days off and later became course leader for the same course she studied years earlier. She is an alumni of the course she was running. Quickly working her way through the ranks, Kelly became programme director, running the fashion communication programme, eventually landing in her current position as Associate Dean (deputy head) so works over all the courses at LCOF. As well as this, she then got the opportunity to teach the same courses in Hong Kong and did so for 5 years, then moved back to the big smoke but still works closely with the Beijing Institute of Fashion and Technology. Clearly a taste for the academe, alongside working, Kelly is doing her PHD at weekends on how we receive fashion media but from a philosophical frame work - which is about how fashion effects our being in the world - doing this she’s found out that online relationships are now a dimension of our being as they are so embedded. Kelly claims she’s never been a true fashionista, but somehow she’s managed to work her way to the top of London College of Fashion and write a PhD. Very impressive!

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