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by:Johanna Agerman Ross

Themes:Back to BasicsMulticulturalismSubversive TailoringNew Techniques

Fashion Paper #1July 2011

GRADUATINGTALENT

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It is now 20 years since Graduate Fashion Week was founded. This unique initiative is the largest fashion education event in the world. It lets more than 1000 students from 50 different undergraduate fashion colleges across the UK showcase their work to an audience of fashion industry professionals in the centre of London. “Talent doesn’t have a postcode,” says Terry Mansfield, chairman of Graduate Fashion Week. “But it would be a logistical nightmare if the fashion industry had to travel across the UK just to see these graduation shows. Here they are all under one roof.” Next to the stand-alone shows of Central Saint Martins, London College of Fashion and the Royal College of Art, Graduate Fashion Week makes London a hotbed for undiscovered fashion talent for an intense week in June.

Usually filtered to the general public through image-lead news reports in free newspapers and on the websites of fashion magazines, the full picture of the graduate fashion shows is normally the exclusive domain of fashion industry professionals, but not this year.

At 18.30 on 6 June, London College of Fashion started live streaming its graduate fashion show online. Like some of the fashion industry’s biggest brands, London College of Fashion decided to make its students’ work available to the whole world as the show unravelled in front of a ‘real’ audience of high-calibre fashion insiders and celebrities.

It demonstrated two things: firstly, graduate fashion shows are now sleek and professional productions on par with the shows of established brands; and secondly, the opportunities that the internet now affords a new generation of fashion designers. “Live streaming is like an obligatory requirement nowadays,” says Rob Phillips, Creative Director of The School of Design and Technology at London College of Fashion.

“Pretty much everyone can link onto a computer and they can watch what we are doing […] The audience is never just the show, it’s much, much bigger.”

Bloggers, online magazines and the ease with which most of us now use online technology means that students can share their work with millions of people, instead of just a handful of select fashion media and talent scouts. However, the high visibility is a double-edged sword, because as well as creating more possibilities and furthering careers, it means that graduation shows are less the test beds for the future of fashion. Instead graduates are regarded with the same scrutiny normally reserved for more established designers, making the margin for error non-existent. As the culmination of three years of research is presented in the fleeting moment of a fashion show streamed live online it makes it all about the result rather than the process of getting there. So does the striving for sleek, professional graduation catwalk shows mean that the creativity of the students suffers?

Back to Basics

“We thought that the recession would make the students create more wearable, commercial collections,” says Willie Waters, Fashion Course Director at Central Saint Martins in London. “But I don’t think it has affected them creatively at all, they just seem to get more experimental.”

Indeed, the recession has been a constant companion for this year’s graduates, hitting the world economy as they started their undergraduate degrees three years ago. Central Saint Martins graduate Ryohei Kawanishi’s collection was a brilliant piece of contemporary political commentary. Regarded more as a wearable art installation, Kawanishi had knitted

This summer the UK produced nearly 5000 fashion graduates. Johanna Agerman Ross reviews the shows and highlights some of the key themes that emerged.

Graduating Talent

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left to right: Ryohei Kawanishi, BA Fashion Design with knitwear from Central Saint Martins Photo: Niall McInerney, 2011

Katie Jones, BA Fashion Design with knitwear from Central Saint MartinsPhoto: Niall McInerney, 2011

Rory Longdon, BA Fashion Knitwear from Nottingham Trent University Photo: Chris Moore, Catwalking.com, 2011

oversized garments from swathes of fabric strips and heavy yarns, sometimes held in place with chicken wire to which objects like sneakers and cardboard uzis were pinned. It was a tableau of political events that have taken place over the last years and a play on the significance that the internet now plays in our lives for accessing news and mobilising people. Each garment was branded with handcrafted logos from the landscape of the web: Youtube, Google, Facebook and Wikileaks were integrated into each ensemble. The execution was cleverly hands-on, juxtaposing the virtual world of the internet with the very real and tactile element of traditional crafts.

“So many students used different craft techniques in their work this year,” says Walters. “And there was a lot of embellishment.” She had several students that used crocheting and knitting in exuberant ways, such as Katie Jones’ collection which combined crochet, macramé and cross stitching to create voluminous dresses and capes, that made the models look all tucked up and safe. This idea of highlighting clothing as protection, its most basic function, could be seen elsewhere too. Rory Longdon who studied Fashion Knitwear at Nottingham Trent University showed a minimalist and monochrome collection that, with its metallic detailing, was reminiscent of armour. A glimpse into his portfolio reveals that his inspiration came from the scientific movement Transhumanism. “I am imagining warrior like women, whose insides are altered through advanced technology to make them a new powerful race,” says Longdon. The collection, which was beautifully executed, won Longdon the coveted Gold Medal at Graduate Fashion Week.

Multiculturalism

During Graduate Fashion Week students from more than 80 different countries are showing their collections. As a result influences from all the corners of the world can be seen in the work, creating an eclectic mix of patterns, materials and construction techniques that is exclusive to a country with so many foreign students.

Momo Wang, a print graduate at Central Saint Martins recognises the importance of a multicultural student cohort to her upbeat collection: “My 30 classmates come from 18 different countries. Some-times they just came to the studio in their own costume,” said Wang in an interview. “Everybody can bring some inspiration to each other. So I took some elements from folk art, Russian culture and African totems into my collection.” Because almost all the garments were made by hand she travelled to her native town Jinzhou in north-eastern China to get her family to help with the knitting. “I couldn’t finish it all by myself.” The result was the week’s most memorable show: short models carrying giant balloons and soap bubble guns with wide smiles on their faces, communicating the positive vibe of both the making and wearing of these unique garments.

Nova Chiu’s collection Shangri Ladida at the London College of Fashion won her the school’s Collection of the Year title. It explored the concept of Chinese identity in contemporary fashion design, says Chiu: “Although the country is the largest clothing manufacturer in the world, very little is known about Chinese ethnic fashion.” The collection is a diverse mix of ancient Chinese culture, mixing traditional and labour intensive Chinese ink and wash painting, jade and wooden beading with modern-day machine embroidery and digital printing.

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left: Momo Wang,BA Fashion Design with print from Central Saint MartinsPhoto: Niall McInerney, 2011

below: Nova Chiu, BA Fashion Design Technology: Surface Textiles from London College of Fashion Photo: Chris Moore, Catwalking.com, 2011

bottom: Marissa Owen, BA Fashion Design from the University of Central Lancashire Photo: Chris Moore, Catwalking.com, 2011

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Marissa Owen from the University of Central Lancashire drew inspiration from traditional and modern Japanese costume, mixing clashing prints and layer upon layer of fabrics tied together with big bows to add structure. It won her the Womenswear Award at Graduate Fashion Week, but hers was not the only collection referencing Japanese fashion culture and it seems that the legacy of Japanese fashion designers from the 1970s and 1980s, as spelled out in exhibitions at the Fashion Institute of Technology, the Barbican and the Victoria and Albert Museum over the last year, has had an impact on many young graduates’ work. Such as Jo Qiao Ding from Central Saint Martins, whose billowing cloaks reference both nuns’ garb and the flatness of kimonos with their patterned insides and slits instead of structured sleeves.

Subversive Tailoring

Traditional tailoring techniques remain a source of inspiration for many UK graduates, but subverted from their original function are used in increasingly interesting ways. In Edinburgh College of Art graduate Felix Chabluk Smith’s collection each garment was made from fragments of late-Victorian tailoring patterns, sourced from The Sectional System of Gentlemen’s Garment Cutting from 1895. No modern patterns or blocks were used at all, but the finished result wasn’t historical in look or feel, instead his inventive cuts and use of material revealed a contem-porary silhouette with only subtle hints to history.

In a similar fashion Central Saint Martins graduate Ivan Curia Nunes turned the lining of suits into the finished garment in a collection that imagined Oscar Wilde going to South America. In a collection, which focused on wearability, he even managed to make

linen look desirable. Fellow graduate Nicholas Aburn also focused on tailoring, but for women. Playing around with sizes, he used tailoring to experiment with scale and fit, making garments that looked either oversized or too small, creating somewhat unflattering but interesting shapes that despite the use of a clashing colour palette in aubergine, red blue and pink captured the imagination of the judges and was rewarded as the first runner-up to the top L’Oreal Award.

Historically the preserve of menswear, tailoring was also used to make masculine silhouettes more feminine, with nipped-in waists and unexpected fabrics popping up in many collections. Calum Harvey’s show at the Royal College of Art sent men onto the catwalk in softly tailored jackets with fur collars, cloche hats and silk and lace vests underneath. The play on gender was repeated in Sarah Hall’s menswear collection at Central Saint Martins where she dressed men in short dresses and in Jung Yeon Chae’s London College of Fashion show, where crisp cotton fabrics were fashioned into skirt-like shorts and blouse-like jackets and shirts.

New Techniques

The Royal College of Art is the only college during Graduate Fashion Week to solely showcase postgraduates and it was here that some of the most interesting experiments were shown. Reflecting on the open studio policy of the college, womenswear graduate Nicola Morgan presented an interesting collection that can best be described as a fusion between fashion and jewellery design. Parts of the dresses were made through rapid prototyping, creating simple harnesses from which she hung fine jersey knits, draping them elegantly around the body.

left to right: Felix Chabluk Smith, BA Menswear from Edinburgh College of Art Photo: Chris Moore, Catwalking.com, 2011

Ivan Curia Nunes, BA Fashion Menswear from Central Saint MartinsPhoto: Niall McInerney, 2011

Nicholas Auburn, BA Fashion Womens-wear from Central Saint MartinsPhoto: Niall McInerney, 2011

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It was an interesting example of how a product design manufacturing technique can be incorporated into fashion design. Mass production isn’t on the cards yet as each piece is extremely labour intensive and took Morgan four months to produce. However, she is exploring ways of speeding up the process.

Paul Stafford who studied millinery at the same college, used laser cutting to create the plastic under-pinning for his headpieces. The jersey fabric attached to it was melted together with the structure to create one uniform piece of differing stiffness that draped across the body in something that resembled a more elegant version of a beekeeper uniform. It was an innovative use of millinery that worked both to conceal and reveal the rest of the body.

The Fashion Print student Flaminia Saccucci was the winner of the Best Student Collection at Central Saint Martins. Her collection used delicate floral and tyre track motifs hand printed onto fine latex, giving the rubbery material an unexpected and less subver-sive feel. “Most people didn’t understand what fabric she had used,” says Walters of the collection. Proof that the catwalk show itself only gives part of the story behind each painstakingly crafted garment. It is in static exhibitions, such as the one that just wrapped up over 70 years of operations at Central Saint Martins’ Charing Cross campus – after summer the college is opening brand new premises in King’s Cross – that viewers have a better chance of interacting and understanding the research and ideas that goes into the making of a collection. The live-streamed fashion show can never give that level of detail, even if the coverage is wider-ranging.

The Business of Fashion

Although individual talent is the focus of Graduate Fashion Week, far from all of this year’s 5000 graduates from fashion-related undergraduate courses in the UK will go on to set up on their own. “Not everyone here is going to become a famous designer,” says Terry Mansfield of Graduate Fashion Week. “This year the focus is on the business of fashion and the many opportunities there are for young graduates in the industry.” Research by Oxford Economics assessed the direct value of the British Fashion Industry to the British economy as £21 Billion (British Fashion Council 2010) and the industry directly employs 816,000 people. That’s more than twice as many jobs as real estate, car manufacturing and telecommunications put together (Fox 2010), says the press release for the build-up to Graduate Fashion Week. Despite tough economic times, fashion seems to be a business where many of these graduates will be able to build a future in the UK or abroad.

left to right: Calum Harvey, MA Menswear Royal College of Art Photo: Christina Smith, 2011

Jung Yeon Chae, BA Menswear London College of FashionPhoto: Chris Moore, Catwalking.com, 2011

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top to bottom: Paul Stafford, MA Womenswear Millinery from Royal College of ArtPhoto: Christina Smith, 2011

Flaminia Saccucci,BA Fashion Design with print from Central Saint MartinsPhoto: Niall McInerney, 2011

Itziar Vaquer, MA Womenswear from Royal College of Art Photo: Itziar Vaquer, 2011

Nicola Morgan,MA Womenswear from Royal College of Art Photo: Christina Smith, 2011

Author:

Johanna Agerman Ross is a London-based design critic with Swedish roots. Since she graduated from the Royal College of Art with an MA in History of Design in 2005, she has worked on the collection research project at the Design Museum and lectured in fashion and design history and theory at the Royal College of Art and Central Saint Martins.

In 2008 she became deputy editor of the international architec-ture and design magazine Icon. She left in January this year to work on a new and independent publishing venture – a biannual magazine dedicated to architecture, design and fashion. It is called Disegno and the first issue is due out this autumn. Her freelance writing can be found in the UK edition of Wired, Icon – where she is still a contributing editor, and the recently re-launched Swedish magazine Form.

Links:

Graduate Fashion Weekwww.gfw.org.uk

The Royal College of Artwww.rca.ac.uk

Central Saint Martinswww.csm.arts.ac.uk

London College of Fashionwww.fashion.arts.ac.uk

Edinburgh College of Artwww.eca.ac.uk

University of Central Lancashirewww.uclan.ac.uk

Nottingham Trent Universitywww.ntu.ac.uk

Flaminia Saccucci:Tyre track pattern printed onto latex (detail)Photo: Niall McInerney, 2011

ADF Papers:

ADF Papers explore new directions in British architecture, design and fashion. They are available online for printing at Back of the Envelope blog www.britishcouncil.org/ backoftheenvelope.

Published by the British Council’s Architecture, Design, Fashion department; designed by objectif, and printed on Colourplan paper by GF Smith.

The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations. In the Architecture, Design, Fashion department we develop exhibitions, events and collaborations linking designers and cultural institutions around the world. We also provide information about British design across the globe.

Cover illustration: