Rosie Semple Backstage Assistant & Manager at London Fashion Week at Bacchus

People Advisor

Kyra

Apr 2023 - Current (3 years 3 months)

People and Culture Executive

Kyra

May 2021 - Current (5 years 2 months)

Backstage Assistant for Burberry AW20

Burberry

Feb 2020

Burberry held its show in the vaulted Victorian ironwork hall at Olympia, a London venue that must have been constructed around the time that Thomas Burberry began his company. As a huge publicly traded corporation operating globally, it is now stepping up efforts to do better with its carbon footprint, stating not only that the show venue was “certified sustainable” but also that the company is investing in “carbon offsetting” initiatives with regenerative agriculture and agroforestry in Australia via Pur Projet (whose work can be read up on the charity’s website.)

Backstage Assistant for David Koma AW20

Back

Feb 2020

David Koma’s experience of London typically has less to do with the kind of dry wit Brits are known for and more to do with a catty kind of poshness and glamour. But he tried his hand at the former on the runway today with an irreverent collection that saw the designer put his twist on all things traditionally London. Some of the references were instantly obvious: the “Gherkin” building as an elaborately beaded minidress; the Union Jack stamped on the heels of pumps; the cityscape print translated into bike messenger shirts and shorts. Others took a bit more reading into, like the emerald jewelry and pannier skirts—simultaneous nods to Princess Di and Dame Viv.

Showroom Manager and Casting Assistant for Bosideng AW20

Back

Feb 2020

Backstage Manager for Martine Rose AW20

XYZ Brand Experience

Jan 2020

AW20 saw Martine take us to her daughter’s primary school in Kentish Town for a collection that looked back across the designer’s past without ever feeling self-referential, constantly teasing at new possibilities. “This is my daughter's school and it's a really great school,” Martine said after the show. “I think it's really optimistic, really universal... primary school is a really magical place and I wanted everyone to feel that, to feel really optimistic. Young people and their education, it's really fucking important. It's the future! We need to invest in them and inspire them.” The walls of the school hall were still adorned with the artwork and projects of the children at Torriano Primary School, providing an incredibly surreal ba

Backstage Assistant for Burberry SS20

Burberry

Sep 2019

Here is a counterintuitive thought: Burberry becomes better when Riccardo Tisci lets himself put more of his own Italian self into it. His knowledge of the craft of cutting and draping, acquired in Paris at Givenchy, his European instinct for sophisticated sexiness and his affinity for modern fabrics are some of his natural strengths. That, and his proven track record in bringing diversity to the runway and garnering the following of a youth audience. Notwithstanding the corporate responsibility of somehow finding ways to represent the Britishness of Burberry to the world (the most confusing of tasks when even the British themselves are notoriously divided over what on earth that signifies) the more Tisci permits himself to be true to his p

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Assistant Director for Wen Pan SS20

Wen Pan Studio

Sep 2019

Wen Pan, winner of the prestigious Fashion Scout Merit Award, presented their SS20 collection at the intimate Victoria House catwalk. As a relatively new brand, just celebrating their tenth year, Wen Pan already has a very signature style. At the centre of the collection was the juxtaposition of laissez-faire grunge and a light, clean palette. Each look flowed after the last, with an emphasis on 1930s androgynous silhouettes and frayed amalgams of white and muted teal fabrics. Most of the diverse set of models all sported fresh, dewy skin and edgy, teased mullets as they strutted down the catwalk to 90s-esque music. Draping white and cream fabric with accents of plaid and subtle embroidery formed the basis of the collection. Despite the co

Backstage Manager for Martine Rose SS20

XYZ Brand Experience

Jun 2019

When she chooses her moment to speak, people flock to hear what Martine Rose has to say. This time, her choice of location was loaded with sarcasm—an astro-turfed roof garden at the top of a corporate building in the City of London, which she invaded with an oddball stream of be-wigged characters wearing clothes she’d revived from memories of club culture in the ’80s.

Operations Associate

Kyra

May 2019 - Current (7 years 2 months)

Kyra is a Gen-Z entertainment network. The way young people consume media has changed. Kyra TV was created to embrace that change. In an age of fake news, scare-media and negativity, our mission is to create a better, more positive, inclusive world.

Backstage Manager at Arise Fashion Week Lagos

Bacchus Agency

Apr 2019

Backstage Assistant for Burberry AW19

Burberry

Feb 2019

Riccardo Tisci named his second collection for Burberry “Tempest,” which referred, per his press release, to “contrasts in British culture and weather.” The climate—both in political and environmental senses—is a hot-button subject in these stormy times for the U.K. Yet it’s Burberry’s role as a global brand to somehow project a positive message across markets and generations. Tisci’s intention, he said, is “including, not excluding.”

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Backstage Manager for Fashion Hong Kong

Feb 2019

The Hong Kong Trade Development Council presented four leading Hong Kong Fashion Labels and their Autumn/Winter 2019 collections at London Fashion Week: Doriskath by Doris Kath Chan, HOUSE OF V by Cynthia Mak, LOOM LOOP by Polly Ho and Yeung Chin by Yeung Chin.

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Office Manager

AI PR LTD

Jan 2019 - Apr 2019 (4 months)

PR Agency representing a range of luxury and fashion brands including Loewe, Paco Rabanne, A.P.C, Sunspel, Sonia Rykiel and J.W.Anderson.

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Backstage Manager for Paria Farzaneh AW19

Jan 2019

There have been some hair-raisingly dystopian underground performances around London these past three days. The one young Paria Farzaneh put on was skeweringly on point about the social media–altered existence we’ve all surrendered to today. She led her fans to a hole-in-the-wall club under a railway arch and involved them in a scenario that felt like a Black Mirror episode.

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Backstage Assistant: LCF MA19 Selection Shows

Dec 2018

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Event Manager for Cake and Bubbles launch by Albert Adria at Hotel Cafe Royal

Nov 2018

After his successful pop up here at Hotel Café Royal in 2016, famed chef Albert Adrià – who built a gastronomic revolution alongside his brother, Ferran, at the legendary Michelin three-star elBulli and runs Barcelona's hottest restaurant 'Tickets' – returns to London to launch his first permanent establishment outside of his native Spain, ‘Cakes and Bubbles’

Backstage Manager for Gènavant in Collabaration with Jimmy Choo SS19

Gènavant

Sep 2018

The long awaited Spring/Summer 2019 collection amazed everyone the way we knew it would. London based Genavant collaborated with iconic luxury shoe designer Jimmy Choo and showcased their debut collection at London Fashion Week.

Backstage Assistant for Burberry SS19

Without Production

Sep 2018

Riccardo Tisci wants to bring all generations under the Burberry umbrella. “The mother and the daughter, the father and the son,” he said, after delivering his much-anticipated debut collection. He named it Kingdom: “It’s like a patchwork or a mix of the British lifestyle.”

Event Manager

Produce UK

Jun 2018 - Oct 2018 (5 months)

A summer series of events at the International Quarter London with Lendlease. Linking future-focused workplaces, welcoming new homes, and a diverse range of shops, restaurants, and culture, IQL connects people, places, and businesses in innovative ways. Creating collisions and experiences that inspire us to think differently.

Backstage Manager for Martine Rose SS19

XYZ Brand Experience

Jun 2018

There’s something to be said about the sense of joyful—and not trauma-catalyzed, like in the U.S.—communal vignettes coming out of the U.K. lately. Broadscale, we all know: The marriage of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle was the spectacle of all spectacles, but it was arguably more enjoyable given the ebullient public inclusion on display (watched, in the end, by nearly 2 billion people worldwide). Tonight, for Martine Rose’s Spring show, a tiny family street located in a neighbourhood called Chalk Farm had a much smaller yet fundamentally similar feeling: Rose staged her runway on a cul-de-sac called St. Leonard’s Square, and its residents were invited to sit with fashion editors and VIPs.

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Backstage Manager for Mother of Pearl SS18

Feb 2018

To encounter some of Britain’s foremost contemporary art in a more discreet location than say, the Barbican, make a beeline for Vauxhall’s Newport Street Gallery. The angular but unobtrusive space, designed by Caruso St John Architects, houses the private collection of Turner Prize–winning Damien Hirst, whose ex-partner, designer Maia Norman, founded Mother of Pearl. It was here that creative director Amy Powney chose to stage the label’s Spring 2018 see-now-buy-now show. “The gallery was a natural fit because this collection is a celebration of all things British that I love, in a place that celebrates British art,” she said backstage.

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Backstage Manager for Toga AW18

Feb 2018

This season Toga turned the show space into a fun house. There are too many ways to play colour games and print puzzles. The beginning of the collection seems to be like a child playing hide-and-seek. Wearing the oversized silhouette, and even reversing the back of the blazer to the front (After we saw people did this with shirts, is it an updated version for wearing boyfriend’s chunky blazers?) And you can see those vibrant prints hiding underneath.

Backstage Assistant for Burberry AW18

Without Production

Feb 2018

“It was really me, aged 15,” laughed Christopher Bailey as he was being body-hugged and kissed by friends and well-wishers at the end of a show that was the grand finale of his 17 years at Burberry. In so many ways, it was the most autobiographical and heartfelt collection of his career—an honest, symbolic revisiting of the place of his first fashion awakening, a dive club in a basement in Halifax, Yorkshire, and all the DIY teen-tribe styles that rolled through British street culture in the ’80s and ’90s. Of course, Bailey said it with music, too. What more perfect an opening anthem could there be than “Smalltown Boy,” the Bronski Beat hit from 1984, sung by the gay working-class pop hero Jimmy Somerville?

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Backstage Manager for London College of Fashion MA18 Menswear Show

Jan 2018

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Backstage Manager for Toga SS18

Sep 2017

Traditional tailoring was slashed, chopped, reversed, crumpled and then covered in plastic for the latest Toga collection. Unveiled at the gothic Southwark Cathedral, SS18 was a testament to Yasuko Furuta’s mission to create for women who thrive in disarray, the desecration of the suit a symbol of a total rejection of the order it represents. 20 years into their history, Toga is continuing to prove there’s beauty in chaos.

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Backstage Manager for Molly Goddard, Fashion in Motion at the V&A

Jul 2017

It was an interesting morning at the V&A today when Molly Goddard, and her mother, father, sister, and boyfriend, moved in and converted the vast new subterranean Sainsbury Centre into a delightful, on-a-shoestring Molly-world. “I was brought up coming here with my mum on Saturdays,” said Goddard as she sprawled out on a huge, red velvet–draped bed on one side of the cavernous hall.

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Casting Assistant for A-Cold-Wall SS18

ACOLDWALL LIMITED

Jun 2017

A-COLD-WALL* (ACW*) is the curated product of British street culture. It is both a staunch symbol and mercurial component of the clashing of class and environment in the British landscape. Born of the stark subversive brilliance of the underclass, ACW* is expressed and refined by the cerebral sensibilities of the upper sections of society. This amalgamation is materialised through mediums of social commentary, immersive art and cutting-edge garments.

Backstage Manager for Martine Rose SS18

XYZ Brand Experience

Jun 2017

London Men’s Fashion Week, under the jurisdiction of the British Fashion Council, has taken place within strict geographical parameters for five years, but when Martine Rose says, “I’m going to show in Tottenham,” then the fashion people up and go to Tottenham. Their alacrity to be there, several postcodes out of the West End, was proof of how highly regarded this designer is, and not just by a local claque. This time the invitation was to a community climbing gym which the neighborhood is proud of for the way it forms local bonds, and Rose came straight to the point. “I was looking at the Toronto underground scene of the ’80s and ’90s, and then I got interested in the outdoor lifestyle—climbing, golfers, bicycle messengers,” she said. “It

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Backstage Manager for London College of Fashion MA17 Womenswear

Feb 2017

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Backstage Manager for Toga AW17

Feb 2017

Yasuko Furuta held this show in Guildhall, a 15th-century gothic chamber in the City of London that’s lined with the livery of hundreds of generations’ worth of tribal vested interests. Eagles, axes, fleurs-de-lis, lions rampant, swords, roses, the armored gauntlet, you name it—all the set-in-stone emojis of medieval power were present. It was apt that down below, on the flagstone floor, Furuta disassembled, reconsidered, then built up anew some of the default markers of 21st-century feminine attire. Often, her sliced and layered outfits were flanked by gauntlets armoured with hefty knuckledusters of bling. How great (but simple) to sandwich a pair of washed and high-waisted mom jeans incongruously between a golden sequined crop top and a

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Backstage Manager for London College of Fashion MA17 Menswear Show

Jan 2017

Backstage Manager for Martine Rose AW17

XYZ Brand Experience

Jan 2017

It was one of the most off-the-beaten-track of all the menswear shows in London or elsewhere: off-schedule, in a Latin community covered street market in Tottenham, on the night of a Tube strike. Yet anyone who made it there saw Martine Rose round up and make polished yet edgy stylistic sense of subjects that have been occupying the menswear fraternity at large. Or as she put it, clothes inspired by “bankers, office workers, and bus drivers.”

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Backstage Manager for Toga SS17

Sep 2016

The Toga woman inhabits a watery world for Spring 2017. The clues were there even before the show began, not so much in the show’s title—Flux, Temperance, Release—but in the little glossy pools that decorated the industrial floor of the East London venue. These shiny eddies were still being polished by the Japanese designer Yasuko Furuta’s fastidious team just moments before the hushed start of the show, and their muted, powdery colours set the aqueous tone. What began as a drip, soon gathered into a tidal wave as the puddle motifs appeared as oversize silicone embellishments on masculine shirting that was worn with wet-looking, embossed cotton trousers. The pants were so high-shine they almost reflected the heaving front row. The same fabr

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Producer of Issues 73, 74 & 75

Mar 2016 - Mar 2017 (1 year 1 month)

In the know about the music you love and the sounds you’re yet to discover, Notion is as independent as your music taste. Our digital destination and quarterly print editions are a platform for pioneering talent, while Notion’s creative hub — Studio Notion — builds bridges between brands and the music business. At the same time Notion’s live music agenda mixes bespoke music happenings, with carefully curated festival level events. With one ear to the ground, Notion is dedicated to creating space for contemporary culture, bringing you the freshest faces in music and beyond like you’ve never seen them before.

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Backstage Manager for Mother of Pearl AW16

Feb 2016

The Living Room series by English photographer Nick Waplington documents the daily lives of two working-class families living on council estates, i.e., purpose-built, government-subsidized housing. Amy Powney drew on those Waplington photos for the latest Mother of Pearl collection, and the reference was a productive one—not because it introduced anything particularly new to the MoP idiom, but rather because it sat so neatly within the brand vocabulary that Powney was able to refine her message and selectively elaborate.

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Backstage Manager for London College of Fashion MA16 Womenswear Show

Feb 2016

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Backstage Manager for London College of Fashion MA16 Menswear Show

Jan 2016

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Backstage Manager for Toga SS16

Sep 2015

A clay-hued backdrop, replete with a trio of eerily lit trees, set the naturalistic tone at Toga‘s London Fashion Week runway debut. Under the banner of “Petals, Minerals, Squiggles,” designer Yasuko Furuta explored her “complex woman” with varying degrees of success. In line with the chaotic weather patterns of her adopted city of London (and back home in Tokyo), Furuta showed the kind of trans-seasonal daywear that is trending right now. Okay, so the heavy mesh white coat appliquéd with a cascading nude ruffle wouldn’t provide much cover in a downpour, but it was so pretty.

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Backstage Manager London College of Fashion MA15 Womenswear Show

Feb 2015

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Backstage Manager for London College of Fashion MA15 Menswear Show

Jan 2015

Collection Assistant for Victoria Secrets Fashion Show

OBO

Dec 2014

The 19th Victoria’s Secret show took place in London this week, which saw the Angels storming the capital. This is the first time the lingerie extravaganza has been held in the UK and the second time it comes to Europe (a show took place in Cannes in 2010). This year’s show is officially the biggest show yet.

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Backstage Assistant & Manager at London Collection Mens

Jun 2014 - Jun 2016 (2 years 1 month)

Lou Dalton, Kay Kwok, Astrid Anderson, Lee Roach, Agi & Sam, Sibling, Katy Eary, HOM, Shaun Samson, Christoper Raeburn, Matthew Miller, Nazir Mazhar, Richard Nicoll, Kit Neale, Common, Alex Mullins, Craig Green, Sankuanz Presented By GQ China, A.Sauvage, Todd Lynn, Baartmans and Siegel, Alex Mattsson, Sean Suen Presented By GQ China

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Backstage Assistant & Manager at London Fashion Week

Feb 2013 - Current (13 years 5 months)

Amanda Wakely, Bora Aksu, Ashley Williams, Eudon Choi, Jasper Conran, Halpern, Simone Rocha, OSMAN, Ashish, David Koma, Shrimps, Jean-Pierre Braganza, Holly Foulton, Gareth Pugh, Vivienne Westwood Red Label, Christopher Raeburn, Molly Goddard, Toga, Mother of Pearl, DAKS, John Rocha, PPQ, Sibling, Felder Felder, KTZ, Issa, Marios Scwab, Michael van der Ham, Nasir Mazhar, Lucas Nasciemento, H by Hakaan Yildirim, JPB, Fydor Golan, Peter Pilotto, Ryan Lo, Huishan Zang, TeatumJones, Barbara Casasola, Antonio Berardi, Emilio De La Morena, Sid Neigum, Oliver Spencer, Isa Arfen, Xiao Lo, CSM, LCF

Backstage Assistant for Ru Paul's Dragrace UK

Produce UK

Management of the backstage production of the London fashion show, RuPaul’s Drag Race.

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Event Coordinator for Crep Protect

Freelance Event Coordinator

Controlling all aspects of event management for a product launch

Event Manager of Campaign for National Parks, New Forest

Produce UK

Artistic event-making agency campaign for National Parks (New Forest)

Rosie Semple

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