'Vogue' to showcase graduate designers

The best of Britain's fashion students are in London this week - determined to prove their work is fit for grown-ups.

The best of Britain's fashion students are in London this week - determined to prove their work is fit for grown-ups.

Long ridiculed for creating unwearable clothes, fashion students are proving their critics wrong this year by securing an unprecedented photo shoot from the country's leading fashion magazine. As Graduate Fashion Week got under way yesterday, Vogue announced that it would devote eight pages to its first major fashion shoot dedicated to graduate designersfrom the MA fashion course at Central St Martins college in London.

"We've never, ever given that much space to students, but it was quite a remarkable year," said Harriet Quick, the fashion features editor at Vogue. "Most people think student work is very unwearable. Wrong. It's very exciting and beautifully executed."

The fashion week provides an opportunity for students from more than 30 colleges in Britain to show off their work to headhunters from the major couture houses and the fashion press.

Past stars of Graduate Fashion Week, now in its 13th year, have gone on to work for some of the best-known international fashion houses. Last year, 40,000 people attended the four-day event, held in Battersea Park arena.