Wednesday 7th June: Central Saint Martins BA Fashion Show 2017, Xiao Ming

As you can probably tell, THIS WAS MY ABSOLUTE FAVOURITE.  

I've never seen anything like this before and that is exactly the quality I'm looking for at Graduate Fashion Week.  Xiao Ming's collection defies any description and although worn on a body is not in any way definable as a garment.  It's surface pattern applied to skin.  It's textile art in motion.  It's a glorious colour palette and an engineering technique that I can't place.  Like giant paper-cuts but as shiny as silk with a sharp sheen sliced and placed together.  It's not woven from warp and weft but links like loops of knit in radical new shapes.  It's kind of sci-fi but not recognisable from any source or reference.  It's totally new, fresh and turning fashion design upside down, inside-out and stuck on with tape.  Its Xiao Ming.

Tuesday 6th June: Central Saint Martins BA Fashion Show 2017

Congratulations to the Fashion / Textiles and Marketing students at CSM for this year's show!  The styling of each collection was incredible from the shoes to the headwear and all of the accessories inbetween.  I was so impressed!

The general feeling was quite dystopian and a bit scary with models summoning up zombie realness, stomping down the runway!  But I could see a heavy influence from the House Of Beauty and Culture in the materials and tailoring reflecting the work of Christopher Nemeth and Judy Blame.  For that I applaud the ICA in last year's show on Judy's work and the collective.  Many collections echoed this aesthetic with hessian, twine, drift wood and twigs tangled into seams and some were even woven basketry and crocheted plastic bags.  Here are my highlights which included the "L'Oreal Professional Young Talent" award winner Goom Heo's look at the top here, constructed of layers of reclaimed t-shirts.  I really loved Sarah Ansah's 3D knitwear from metallic yarn and Tolu Cocker's screenprints of HipHop caricatures on denim.  All really exciting from a textile perspective!  See more over on the CSM feed.

From top to bottom:  Goom Heo, Jae Yoo, Tae Kim, Kevin Germanier, Sarah Ansah X 2, Jegor Pister, Tolu Cocker X 2