Image Courtesy of Isabel Macinnes.
Energetic, optimistic and totally unrestricted. From Yaku Stapleton’s hammer-wielding playable characters to Oscar Oūyáng’s wool clad boots and on to Georgia Presti’s elegant – and waste-free – laser-cut silhouettes, the CSM MA Fashion Show ‘23 that took place during LFW was nothing short of, well… CSM.
Providing a mouthpiece through which trailblazing designers from across the globe can semaphore their vision, CSM is a hub of creativity renowned for bypassing convention and encouraging experimentation to discover fashion’s future leaders. Year on year, the graduate collections prove this to be true. This year, we bear witness to a conceptual collection skilfully nuanced by visual epithets of sustainability, afro-futurism, gender, artificial intelligence, pain and post-colonialism.
Ahead of the show, crazed fashion junkees surged around the venue distorting any emblem of order in pursuit of catching a glimpse of the glamour. “Is this the queue for the CSM show?” I asked a Chopova Lowena-donning (a brand founded by two preceding CSM grads) participant of the ‘It’ show crowd. “Yes, we’re trying to get in standing,” she exclaimed, proceeding to desperately ask me whether I had an invite. I did. Out of all the LFW events I attended, the buzz outside the CSM MA ‘23 show was by far the greatest. And, the energy didn’t cease upon entry. Hoards of goers exchanged salutations before navigating their seats on rows upon rows of tightly packed benches. The anticipation was palpable.
A fleet of models of varying colours and sizes strutted assertively down the runway to booming techno. 119 looks swanned by, barely a pause before the next. The transition between designers was clear from each’s unique design language and garment architecture (alongside a count-up on the back screen – but, let’s be real, no one was focusing on that).
Meet six of the designers emerging from the CSM MA class of ‘23…
Images Courtesy of Yaku Stapleton.
Yaku’s MA collection, titled ‘The Impossible Family Reunion In RPG Space’, is a colourful episode of extraordinarily sculpted and voluminous characters that look as though they’ve been reverse supply dropped straight out of Fortnight. Think Gorpcore meets Gamecore. Thick knits, leather jackets, puffa gilets and multi-functional cargo pants built from natural and synthetic materials and a vibrant colour palette of magentas, lime greens and electric blues.
Garments are unusually warped and exaggerated through heat treatments, shrinking and layering. “As with all my projects, I seek to use waste fabric, objects, and ‘rubbish’ that I come across, giving new life to items that would otherwise end up in landfills and providing a starting point for further conversation. My larger characters have voluminous shapes made from reclaimed duvets, while the smaller humanoids dressed in dragon hides are realised from upcycled Godzilla-skin-textured tech-wear garments,” the British-Caribbean menswear designer tells SLEEK.
Staged alongside a kitschy collection of knitted weapons, Yaku playfully pinpoints the nexus of fashion and costume design. “For me, costume design tells a full story with the primary purpose of storytelling. Fashion design does that to some extent, but the purpose of the garments is decided by the designer. When the story goes beyond ‘real-world’ situations, a balance is necessary to achieve functionality and sustainability without compromising on the story being told. Finding the sweet spot meant pushing my garments to the extreme and then working on the functional aspects that make it fit my definition of fashion,” says Yaku.
Deep diving into the Afro-Futurism movement as a reference point has allowed Yaku to introspect his own past whilst simultaneously reimagining his present and future in the universe by investigating how fantasy and digital role-player games combine with perception, scale and human anatomy. His six-player line-up crowned him the L’Oréal Professionel Creative Award as selected by Ib Kamara.
Images Courtesy of Isabel Macinnes.
Distortion, difference and pain are the significant themes embodied within Isabel’s collection. Asymmetric dresses in dark tones, a mega-oversized shirt that trailed behind Isabel herself as she sauntered down the runway and patchwork-esque two pieces with roughly cut edges – all incrementally distorted in unexpected places, toying with the concept of the atypical.
Unable to stand for long periods of time cutting due to a spinal condition, she used a panelling system built from smaller pieces to optimise her standing time in an effort to manage her pain. Utilising her experience to inform her designs, all of the patterns come from a 4D-scan of her spine. “The panels are based on my distorted torso corrected through spinal surgery,” says Isabel to SLEEK, “mixing glamour with the grotesque; a unique take on female elegance.”
This forms the foundations of a subsection of Isabel’s ethos: reconsidering female elegance and making womenswear for a woman of the future, whatever dystopian landscape that might sit within. Curious as to what the future may hold, Isabel seeks reference from the world warping pages of William Gibson’s 1984 Sci-fi novel ‘Neuromancer’. In homage to the cyberpunk book, Isabel’s collection is infused with clashes and contrasts. By fusing the elegant and the misplaced, an unusual feeling of the uncanny ensues. Despite great pain, Isabel upholds an optimistic outlook on the world: “I think a chunk of the world is becoming kinder and more accepting of difference. Unfortunately, you can’t convince everyone of what’s beautiful but I’ve found from gaining confidence and trusting myself, people begin to understand your version of what is beautiful. ”
Images Courtesy of Maxime Black.
Maxime’s MA collection, “CONVERSATION WITH A MACHINE”, is the product of a literal and continuous exchange between human and artificial intelligence. To inform his design process, the french designer fed styling photographs into a self-made AI entity to synthesise combined accumulations fusing human and artificial interpretations of what menswear should be which he then physically translated from a digital to tangible final product. His collection is arguably simple – leather and hide, bomber jackets and cargo pants, but that’s the point.
“The fashion I intend to build may be one of complex processes, but it will only thrive if the outcome is very simple,” he tells SLEEK. Maxime ensures each garment looks as though it’s made from one singular piece of cloth, blurring the boundaries of entity. He conceals construction borders to elevate his pieces to a more harmonious style entity, one that is consistent with the multitude of genres and references artificially interwoven into his collection. Maxime bypassed BA fashion, the sewing and pattern cutting skills that afforded him a place on MA fashion at CSM are the product of hours spent on YouTube.
“Machines enhance your learning experience as much as they enhance the outcome of your work,” shares Maxime, continuing: “I’ve always felt more comfortable with machines, the way they function, the way they were put together, how they could be used in a different way to create something new.” Unafraid of AI, Maxime clarifies that we should not see it as a threat nor competitor but rather as a valuable tool that lacks the human limitation that can impede on the creative process.
“When exploring new ways of creating, one inevitably stumbles upon the barriers of preconceived ideas; concepts that humans have established to help them understand the anatomy of garments. A pocket, a button or a collar, for example, are all coherent details that designers play with to achieve “new”. Interestingly an AI cannot understand these ideas therefore the outcome of its design is not obstructed by it,” he says, finishing: “As we begin to question our future role, place, and fate in this dimension of reality, we need to come to terms with the future outside our current understanding of physical means, and the specific question of creativity is one that I am very excited to explore.”
Images Courtesy of Louisa Fleischer.
“What does it mean to feel ashamed, embarrassed or humiliated as a woman?” asks Louisa through her collection ‘WALK OF SHAME’. Born off the back of her own lived experiences, German womenswear designer Louisa reflects on a time she herself was ashamed of her stuttering. It was her mother who told her to visualise her feet growing like roots into the ground, permitting the stability of a strong and mighty tree.
‘WALK OF SHAME’ is a material manifestation of such imagination. Mossy green textures are draped across unapologetically bare models in formulations symbolic of mother nature’s reassuring motions. Referencing German dancer Pina Bausch, Louisa believes the same philosophy is applicable in dance, likening our extremities to the roots of trees can help one feel grounded and be able to move more fluently. Louise created a number of her garments using pre-owned pieces that hold a pre-existing narrative and emotion already embedded within.
Images Courtesy of Nora Kassim.
Nora uses her MA collection, ‘MAN AGAINST MOUNTAIN’, as an opportunity to analyse her bi-cultural background whilst exploring the differing forms functionality can take to her German and Somali heritage. ‘MAN AGAINST MOUNTAIN’ utilises a neutral colour palette of browns, reds and blues. Using a singular piece of square fabric, like the ones her father who grew up in a Somali tribe wore as skirts and dresses, Nora proves that the same level of functionality as in a western technical jacket can be achieved.
“A square piece of fabric responds to the same specification and adaptability of urban multipurpose wear,” Nora tells SLEEK. The German-Somali menswear designer continues: “Growing up in the western world and feeling in between two cultures, my research allowed me to reflect on a part of my cultural heritage and the importance of family representation. With this collection I have been given the chance to explore different forms of draping based on the traditional Somali dress and the idea of my dads skirt being more than just a square piece of fabric.” Nora’s collection is seasonless, designed with transitionality and adaptability in mind whereby each piece serves a multifunctional purpose.
“A hood can become a bag, which can also be worn around the waist or as a backpack,” she says. This is a feature she hopes to see with permanence, reducing fleeting trends and reducing wastage, as we edge closer to the future of fashion. “It’s designed for a man that is able to adapt to a hot and cold climate, combining puffed vests with naked skin.”
Images Courtesy of Alena Nevedrova.
Relating to a system of government that is centralised and dictatorial, Russian womenswear designer Alena’s MA collection is fathomed around a fragile woman in a totalitarian country. Each of her models donned a mask printed with an unidentifiable face, symbolic of a time in which she had to shield her identity from face recognition cameras to save her place at university when protesting in defence of Alexei Navalny.
Her models wore gloves that linked their hands together symbolic of the feeling of being trapped under authority or policy that one does not support. Using trompe l’oeil prints to create unusual illusions of everyday garments, contorted and folded, Alena makes a statement about the everyday. The final look was a wedding dress which references a road to freedom or escape that is promised with the visa that accompanies marriage.