Style.com [1] gave this year’s Central Saint Martins’ MA show [2] a rather subdued verdict, that there were few standouts or immediate stars set for rapid catapulting into the sort of immediate fashion stardom that the likes of Christopher Kane and Marios Schwab have experienced. However, I think ‘slow and steady wins the race’ is most applicable to this year’s crop of graduates, and at last week’s CSM public viewing, seeing all the pieces up close confirmed that there’s absolute strength in subtlety.
Ok so there was a bit of beige but the colour was worked in different ways. Machabeli did ruffled outerwear and trench incarnations whilst Gaston did a sort of pared down collection of sportswear infused separates.
Simon Machabeli [3] // Kirsty Gaston [4]
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Stark monochrome also dominated... but the shapes and incorporation of a twisted shirt detailing means you couldn’t really call any it minimalist or the like.
Masha Ma [7] // Kirsty Ward [8]
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A lot of grads also seemed to work on one particular pattern or motif which kept things quite focused. Swirly whirly and warped checks never looked so good...
Sachio Kawasaki [11] // Joanne Vanderpuije [12]
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The recognised ‘winners' of this year’s CSM MA grads seemed to have a few things in common, namely working on a particular craft/embellishment and keeping their collections streamlined to show off that specific ‘strength’. So David Steinhorst [15]’s collection [16]had a lot of metal work and heavy zips running throughout all the pieces which bagged him the Harrods Design Award of £5,000. The physical weight of the metal actually gives the pieces themselves fashion 'weight' strangely enough...
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Simone Shailes [19] won the L’Oreal Professionel Fashion Design Award, also of £5,000 with her very heavy knitwear that to me looked like woollen wings, made more beautiful with the addition of metal plates. Shailes joins the growing legion of 'wicked' as opposed to 'traditional' knitwear designers in the UK.
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However my favourite collections used a more unusual sort of embellishment and decoration. Natasha Stolle [22] added enamel pebble effects in bright colours and also constructed a skirt entirely covered with those plastic googly eyes you get on cheap soft toys. From far away, this really isn’t apparent until you get up close and shake it and see the black pupils jostling around!
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Hampus Bernhoff [25] managed to use clear plastic sheeting, the type you get on drycleaning bags, to augment his pieces, which somehow worked in his collection [26].
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Despite my assertion that subtlety is no bad thing, it doesn’t surprise me that my top picks of the MA show are on the decorative side. Still, neither collections are what one would call deliberately ostentatious... especially in comparison to the CSM MA collections that have gone before...
Mary Katrantzou [30] used Russian Constructivism as an inspiration and created quite deliberately strong graphic trompe l’oeil effects of neck jewellery. Real life jewellery also featured, replicating the prints. Zips were used to panel together bonded jersey and wool which really made the colour blocking all the more apparent.
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Finally Louise Markey [34] tickled my fancy with her use of colour that strongly reminded me of this Vogue Korea editorial [35]. There was a sort of oddity to the way she composed the colours in her silk dresses and also an awkwardness in the shapes, which both worked for me when combined together. Her display at the exhibition was quite lovely to stand around in, as the dresses displayed were dazzling in their colour blocking simplicity.
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