One of the outfits designed and made by Kate Askham, final year fashion show, Manchester 2019.Where has the year gone? I look back on my time at the TRC (together with Kazna Asker) with such fondness and am so grateful for the way it shaped my studying this past year. It's been about two weeks since I graduated, which feels extremely surreal and I am now looking for employment, still in glorious Manchester.

I wanted to share with you some photos of my final collection (see here), which I ended up basing around my family living in Glasgow and Iceland during the sixties and seventies. At the very core of my research and design, was a deliberate selection of the fabric and the sourcing of the material.

I made the very first garment of my fashion show presentation with some beautiful black silk-satin that the TRC gave to me, and it set the tone for the rest of my collection entirely. I also used by-product and ethically tanned leather, which I sourced from a British warehouse. The leather I decided to use were all end-of-line pieces, so I was really pleased to give them a new lease of life.

I used only natural fibres, and I carefully selected companies that have sustainability as their key focus. Amazingly, every single piece of my collection was thus made from by-products, surplus or recycled fibres and fabric - thanks to how much the TRC taught me about fibre types, material qualities and why it's worth spending the extra time and care, in order to use something in a responsible manner.

I'm now looking at moving into product development, which will hopefully take me all around the world, and enable me to assist design teams to focus on details, sourcing of fabrics, and finding suitable ateliers with expertise to create beautiful clothes. I think within the next six months I will be in London, and am hoping to work with my tutor Kiran Gobin, who suggested I could perhaps work in his design team. I am also wanting to do some further study eventually, and some more academic writing because I so enjoyed writing my dissertation - I am so eager to be challenged.

I'd love to come and visit you all again, and see what's going on there. Thank you again for such a wonderful experience. I realise how lucky I was to get such an insight, especially at a point where I was struggling to see the value of what I was studying! It was completely eye-opening and the TRC encouraged me to being curious again.

Please give my best wishes to everyone at the TRC and all those I met there!

KINDEST regards, Kate Askham