In September 2015, 20 third-year students from the Fashion Communication BA course at Heriot Watt University visited the exhibition. Course Director, Theresa Coburn, chose Scottish Artists 1750–1900 as a point of departure for students' research, enabling them to deploy the artworks as creative inspiration for narrative-focused fashion photography. Their brief was to respond to the exhibition through the creation of a series of contemporary and cutting-edge fashion photography images.

The students' further research included exploration of the themes of Madonna and Child iconography, the culture of nineteenth-century Spanish gypsies as well as the challenges of the UK's twenty-first-century travelling communities. The artists whose works proved to be most appealing to the students were John Phillip, Allan Ramsay and Sir David Wilkie, with John Phillip's El Paseo (1854) being the painting most referenced as inspiration.

The criteria for the choice of images were those which most successfully met the project brief and will also engage Royal Collection Trust Learning team's various audiences.

The stunning images on display in these pages are the results of the students' inspired and inventive responses to the exhibition.

The Fashion Communication BA Course

This programme is aimed at students who are fascinated by the variety and diversity of ways that fashion and clothing is communicated, promoted and presented creatively to different audiences. Fashion Communication is the activity that supports or encourages the promotion and purchases of fashion products, through photography, film, digital media, performance, music, advertising and journalism.

'This collaboration reinforced the students' appreciation of the importance of using historic and contemporary culture to inspire originality in ideas and also emphasised the role that galleries, museums, exhibitions and archives play in influencing and inspiring a new generation of creative thinkers and practitioners.

This has been the second collaboration between the Royal Collection Trust and Heriot Watt Fashion Communication students and again has proved to be an extremely exciting and inspiring opportunity for students to develop art history research to inspire a collection of highly original contemporary fashion statements.'

Theresa Coburn, Programme Director