Madonna made a surprise appearance at Central Saint Martins BA’s annual graduation fashion show on Tuesday afternoon in London.
Seated next to singer FKA Twigs, the pop icon attended the hour-long fashion show featuring works by 115 graduates in a Moschino leather ensemble while carrying a boombox-shaped bag from Midnight Studios, founded by Shane Gonzales.
This year’s graduates touched on a wide variety of social issues with their collections, including modest fashion, ocean stewardship, gender identity, street culture, fantasy, artificial intelligence, cultural heritage, body inclusion and even childbirth with a designer who showed off a garment with a see-through artificial womb and another with a vivid fake baby on the front.
Another designer sent three models with QR codes down the runway. The codes are linked to an Instagram filter that allows those who scan the codes to try on the designs.
Three graduates received the first prize, the L’Oréal Professionnel Young Talent Award. The grand prize went to knitwear designer Alice Morell-Evans, who has created knitwear for Bethany Williams and Molly Goddard. She presented three intricate and culturally rich looks that redefined the boundary of knitwear design with deeply personal references and a sustainable approach.
The headpiece in the first look was crocheted around her great-grandfather’s chandelier. The gloves are made from scrap yarn from Melin Tregwynt blankets. All of the buttons in the collection were collected by her grandmother, while the third look was made almost entirely from paper thread, leather scraps, vintage tablecloths, and thread scraps with horse brass joints.
Morell-Evans told WWD that her collection, which began with the idea of ”restorative nostalgia and memory distortion” and “emulates a sense of familiarity through clothing and touch,” aims to “communicate memory security, order, comfort”. , and the familiarity of my grandparents’ house but with the savagery of the gray mare ‘Mari Lwyd’, wreaking havoc”.
On winning the grand prize, the Welsh designer said she is excited to “cultivate and grow” her collection. “I love bringing craft back into fashion and I’m excited to grow this idea even further,” she added.
Womenswear designer Emil Dernbach was awarded first runner-up, while Diana Sträng from the Fashion Designer & Marketing track was awarded second runner-up.
Dernbach showed graphically shaped dresses made of metal and wool in Yves Klein blue. Speaking to WWD after the show, Dernbach said the collection was his response to the age of deepfakes and artificial intelligence that we live in.
“My collection aims to explore notions of society with manipulated identities by decoding the essence of who we are deep down. This collection is a glimpse into the possibilities of what collaboration between humans and machines can look like. It offers an opportunity to see the inevitable improvement in technology from an angle of excitement rather than fear and opens up the debate about what the future holds,” she said.
Having worked at Maison Margiela during her internship year, she hopes to return to Paris and continue working at a Parisian fashion house after graduation.
Fashion designer Kiko Kostadinov, one of the judges for this year’s L’Oréal Professionnel Young Talent Award, said the three winners were chosen for their “strong personal benchmarks. They look at their upbringing, families and culture, and then modify it with what they want to present and what current fashion means to them.”
“Alice had a whole world created in her portfolio. She made mini sculptures that informed her dress forms. She worked with local artisans on hats and shoes. Many leather patches on the dresses were from old shoes. She is very interested in the craft and it showed in all aspects of her work.
“Diana was great at taking very normal ideas and twisting them. The leather jacket was hand painted in the north of Sweden with an old traditional technique and the doll’s dress had the Swedish flag but in a very cool way. She had two more looks that were incredible. Too bad she couldn’t show herself,” she added.
Source: wwd.com