The top Fashion Marketing award at this year’s Graduate Fashion Week was scopped by student from the University of East London competing against rivals from all over Britain.

%image(14932242, type="article-full", alt="UEL graduate Chloe Draper, winning this year's Fashion Marketing award, and (inset) Yasmeen Uddin's "clever bunch" design")

Chloe Draper was put through a gruelling interview process at the show staged at the Old Truman Brewery in East London’s Brick Lane, as well as a critique on her business plan for an online fashion company focused on older women.

“It’s the best feeling in the world to win the award,” she said. “I was so happy that my work in marketing has been recognised—it makes me very emotional.”

Chloe’s work was judged as “innovative” and “relevant” by the judges, public relations director Michael Salac and fashion consultant Craig Spellar.

UEL’s Head of Fashion & Textiles, Dorota Watson, said: “Winning an award solidifies and puts a stamp on what the programme is delivering and what the industry thinks of what we’re delivering.”

%image(14932242, type="article-full", alt="UEL graduate Chloe Draper, winning this year's Fashion Marketing award, and (inset) Yasmeen Uddin's "clever bunch" design")

But Chloe’s award wasn’t the only highlight for UEL which stormed this year’s fashion week.

The university sent 23 student collections down the catwalk, for which the official Graduate Fashion Week blog declared: “We were presented with giant glasses to cover giant faces, dresses with angles you could use as a staircase. We bow down, UEL—well done, you clever bunch.”

UEL’s creativity, from Danielle Spencer’s blindingly cheerful laser-cut hearts and arrows to Kayleigh Walsmley’s gender-blurring take on menswear, dominated the catwalk in front of 1,000 industry insiders and journalists.

Kayleigh and fellow design student Vilune Daunoraite were later chosen to take part in the ‘Best of Graduate Fashion Week’ pre-Gala show.

Liverpool-bred Kayleigh’s collection muses on football hooliganism and makes reference to the 1989 Hillsborough disaster, while Vilune’s collection offers ladylike pieces mixed with edgy laser-cut leather.

UEL’s Simon Robertshaw said: “East London is a hotbed of fashion. We’re slightly different from what you see in mainstream fashion—that’s what really marks us out as different.”

The four-day fashion extravaganza which ended in a grand finale in the week showed off the work of 1,000 of the best fashion students and graduates from 40 universities all over Britain, featured in 22 catwalk shows and exhibitions.