Sixteen young residents attended the first of eight fashion skills workshops in East London earlier this month.

With a theme of 'The Little Black Dress', all the fashion trainees will learn the design process by making their own dresses from scratch which will then be showcased in a catwalk finale in late Spring.

During the workshops they learnt different dress making techniques, got to grips with using a sewing machine and practiced the various tailoring skills commonly employed in the fashion industry.

One young resident who attended said:"I will admit that I wasn’t a massive fashion person but the workshop has opened my eyes to all sorts of things and how clothes express people, their personalities and all sorts of things in general."