By Chah Kyoung-won

Don’t worry, soon-to-graduate fashion majors. Job-oriented fashion festival is here.

Seoul City will host “2010 University Fashion Week,” third annual event, at Seoul Trade Exhibition & Convention Center (SETEC) in southern Seoul, Sept.1-4.

The city will focus on boosting real job opportunities for fashion majors in colleges across Seoul and neighboring province of Gyeonggi-do. The week will serve as a festival to showcase the very best graduate fashion design talents.

This year’s fashion week is divided into three parts - fashion shows of graduation works by seniors from 16 universities, exhibitions of the works which will be introduced in the fashion shows and the works from six other non-fashion show participating colleges, and the fashion show contest for the 30 finalists joined by six students from foreign colleges.

Four of the total 16 universities will feature collections of their seniors at their separate fashion shows each day with Sookmyung Women’s University opening the program at 1:00 p.m., Wednesday.

All the works from the fashion shows will be on display along with those that six other universities and one high school, Seongdong Global Business High School, will present without fashion shows.

Thirty finalists, who have been qualified among 150 contestants in preliminaries, will compete during the gala fashion show at 8 p.m. Saturday. Half of them will be screened as winners. They will be cited by Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon with cash prize ranging from 10 million won to 300,000 won, totaling 23 million won depending on ranking.

The 15 winners will also be granted financial support up to 2 million won once they want to get an advanced fashion course at any institute they want to attend for two to three months.

The winners will be given internship opportunities, along with some other 35 fashion majors recommended by their college heads, at 18 leading domestic fashion garment makers, including E-Land and Benefit Korea.

The six foreign participants are two each recommended by the New York Korean Sewing Association, Daito Bunka University in Tokyo and Tsinghua University in Beijing.

During the intervals of fashion shows, 10 fashion planners and marketing experts from the fashion community, including fashion magazine Bog Girl, cosmetics maker Benefit Korea and foreign fashion brand F&F, will give lectures on what kinds of talents fashion brands want to hire.

On the sidelines, there will be a few events such as a photo contest with photos taken from the show by 15 photo majors nationwide, a charity flea market on small fashion pieces for young cancer patients and a booth for reading tarot cards.

“University Fashion Week will not only give fashion majors an opportunity for cultural and information exchange but also provide winners of the design contest with an internship opportunity,” said Ma Chae-suk, in charge of Seoul City’s cultural projects. “We hope that many students will participate.”

To get to SETEC, get off at Hangyeoul Station on Subway Line 3. For more information, call Seoul Fashion Center at 02) 3670-4525.