Where Are They Now?
Jennie Selden

Jennie left Manchester High with A levels in Art, English Literature and French, bound for London, to study at Central St Martin's College of Art and Design where her Art Foundation course enabled her to sample 17 areas of Fine Art and Design, pointing her in the direction of a BA Hons in Set and Costume Design.  Her course included working in industry on the set of Harry Potter and with designers Gideon Davey and Antony McDonald on various operas (Wagner's Ring in Munich and in Berlin, Maastricht, Trieste, Vienna etc). At the end of her degree she specialised in the field of costume, and produced designs for Owen Wingrave, an opera by Benjamin Britten as her final examination piece.

Unable to forget her love of the French language and allured by Parisian life, Jennie enrolled at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts to study Fine Art (Dipl;Nationale Superieure Arts-Plastiques). She spent two years studying History of Art, History of Cinema, life-drawing 'morphologie', painting, architecture, video and in the end found herself once again making clothes and costumes.

At the end of Jennie's studies she entered a fashion show competition in the South of France in April 2005 and won!   A week later she found herself in Madrid for a two-month placement with fashion designer Agatha Ruiz de la Prada. By June, her Spanish had improved and she was offered a job working in Barcelona, Paris, and Milan.

Jennie then decided to study for a post graduate Certificate in Innovative Pattern Cutting, again at Central St Martins. This 'fast-track' post-graduate course reinforced her fashion skills and knowledge and confirmed her desire to work in fashion. She worked with the Spanish fashion house Loewe LVMH for her final presentation piece.  Since graduating, Jennie has been working free- lance in Paris for Agatha Ruiz de la Prada designing prints and also for Serge Cajfinger at the Parisian fashion house, Paule Ka. She says, "I love my life in Paris and I hope the world of Parisian fashion will occupy me for some years to come!"