How CC Got Its Start
This year, most of our executive committee is graduating. We’ve had the opportunity to work together in this space for the past three years, through the rise and fall of COVID, as we struggled to think outside the WFH leisurewear box, and through into this year, as St Andrews began to socially right itself, rewelcoming familiar favourites, like Opening Ball and Polo, as well as fun new ventures, like our own Sex and the City-themed brunch which we hosted at the Rusacks this past November. Since the pandemic, very few committees have remained as cohesive and, I feel, as committed to their ethos as we have.
But in that world of volunteer roles and committee handovers, the history of an organisation like ours can often slowly get lost over each annual shift in its members. As my time as Head of Bloggers began to come to a close, I began to wonder how our society as a whole had been started. So I took a deepdive into our Google Drive, and then onto Facebook, to eventually get in contact with one of our founders, Jamilah Jaffer.
When she first came to St Andrews, Jamilah originally wanted to join one of the town’s many fashion shows, but she was disheartened by some of the cliquishness she witnessed when she tried to get involved. So instead, she created Concrete Catwalk as her own kind of counter to the exclusivity of the fashion show scene. She noticed that there was really ‘nothing capturing what people were creating on a day-to-day basis’ outside of the actual catwalk, so she made street style CC’s primary focus. Here, as Jamilah says, there are ‘so many people from all over the world that are all so stylish and put-together in their own way’, and she wanted to find some way to celebrate that.
For CC’s first-ever photoshoot, Jamilah asked her friends to wear their favourite outfits and meet her in the quad. From there, she and her team started, much as our photographers do now, stopping people in the street to ask to take pictures of their outfits. At first, Jamilah says, ‘there was no real rhyme or reason, just us and our cameras’. But their dedication soon paid off – ‘people started being excited to be on CC when we stopped them, that was really rewarding’.
Our inaugural Adamson event was held in honour of CC’s first birthday, a night Jamilah remembers as being totally surreal: ‘It was also the little things like seeing our logo on the cocktail menu, like, wow, we created this!’ She recalls that having models walk across the bar seemed ‘very rogue’ at the time and that it took a significant amount of convincing to get the Adamson staff’s approval for that to happen. We years down the line are definitely grateful for their determination, as that Adamson bar catwalk has become such a CC signature.
From the first Adamson event
Though she works in banking now, Jamilah recognises that a lot of her people management skills and her ability to accept critical feedback have come from her time directing CC. ‘I think I was a bit out of my depth when we first recruited a committee, and it was hard for me to let go of the reigns and not be a complete control freak,’ she confesses. Yet her hard work and sleepless nights, as well as those of her original team, have created a legacy which we as the present committee are so grateful for.
I've loved seeing how the early days of Concrete Catwalk still mirror so many of ours, from blindfolded initiation to the models walking the Adamson bar. Learning from Jamilah about our origins has been a reminder of the connections fashion can create, the way one idea can affect the whole experience of a later generation of stylish students. This is a university full of unique legacies and traditions; throughout our time here we take on the responsibility of choosing what most resonates with us and carrying it on. Whatever else I’ve accomplished here, I am certainly grateful I chose Concrete Catwalk as one of those legacies.
All images provided by Jamilah Jaffer.
