Meet the LCF MA Womenswear grads who are set to take the industry by storm.
Ning Xu
What drew you to LCF?
London is one of the most diverse metropolitan cities in the world, there is a glut of artistic atmosphere. The culture is more about freedom than in China. For the college, I think LCF is not only ready-to-wear but also reflective of a good sense of art. It more focuses on the technique, cutting and how to make a real garment.
What was the starting point for your MA collection?
This collection presented a strong personal emotion, because it is based on my own personal experience. When I was a kid I was a really shy boy, I didn’t want to talk to people. But when I was silent, I had thunder hidden inside.
I am quite interested in the contrast from the inside and outside. This is what I used to create and develop my collection. I call my MA collection “mute”. I’m trying to present a spirit called “depth of thinking.” Mute doesn’t mean keeping silence or we just need to be Uncle Tom when facing reality. It shows a concept that hoping to speak right to customers’ hearts without saying a word. Silence means more than words in the current situation. “Truth can only be understood than talk.” It shows an attitude to face our imperfect life and also enjoy each tricky part.
How did it develop?
When I started to develop this collection I met with huge problems: how to use garment language to communicate the sound art and the silent mood, how to use a gentle way to show a rich visual effect. I recorded a lot of different sounds waves, such as violent quarrel, natural sounds, noise, and gentle conversation to find the difference from these voices, using these different undulating lines to support my silhouette. I also tried a really fresh cutting structure, using one cutting line to combine the same space with the extra space to show a rich layering visual effect. All of these design ideas, which are based on the sound structure and the mood when the people stay alone. For me I really like the sportswear and functional details. In this collection, It related the stylish items: 1980s influences iconic functional garments, such as: denim jacket, bomber jacket, oversized parkas, slogan shirt to redefine and fuse the classical outdoor functional details, to explore a new girly sporty and casual silhouette.
What sort of details can we expect?
There are multiple wearing ways in one garment, which provides the wearers with more choices. Not only put the emphasis on the surface but also the inside. For the details, it highlights the functional and people’s emotion feeling. Every garment is reversible, each side is totally different. It combined very simple and very complicated looks in one garment. The detachable details are another highlights such as the collar the hood or the pocket, people can depend their own aesthetics to wear the clothing. These provided some different way to the wearers. Approaching the inspiration, I explored some embossing technique, the rubber slogan stamps the braille labels: ‘Mute’, ‘silence is luxurious’ to tell a story. I do cherish the imagination and creation from life, to let people touch, feels, and love themselves. The different sensory haptic material, such as the coated silicon poppers and some different functional fabrics such as the quilted, windproof, w embossed slogan ater-repellent, bonded fabrics. These different materials interact with the human’s touch feeling.
What songs did you have on repeat creating the collection?
When I design this collection I always listen “musique concrete”. The music gives me a lot of imagination, because all of the raw sound is come from the real life, just like my collection all of the details come from different daily life.
What’s your favourite look?
It is really difficult to pick one favorite look. In my collection, all of the garments are my favorite. The collection showed my own style very well, modern sporty and causal with very strong functional details. I think every piece is really easy to mix and match with each other.
I think maybe the quilted long coat with the sheer knitted pants and knitting? This look combined a muted palette of blue colour: sky royal and navy, it looks like the night, peaceful. As the same time the polyester fabric with different sheen created a sense of science and technology. Refer to the mute button’s colour, I used really bright and high contrast mango and sunset yellow on the details. Flashed in the banding inside or the little element of the garments, such as the bottom of collar, the pocket flap, the zippers or the rubber slogans. These mango colour or sunset yellow embellish the different blue, made the garment stand out from other autumn/winter collection, while keep the whole collection harmonious, looks more sporty and sophisticated leisure-luxe.
What are your hopes for the future?
I hope to create my own studio, which should be a theme studio or a manufacturing factory. I will put emphasis on direct, not artificial, slow and steadies design. This starkly contrasts today’s Mc Fashion approach, i.e., fast, generic clothing. For the reason, when I go back to China for my final collection, the studios and companies only focus on making money and not on the details or designs so I really want to create a studio to help new designers to create their own designs.
Alexandru Tunsu
What drew you to LCF?
It was purely instinctive. I am terrifyingly honest with myself when it comes to design, and I always think that no matter how good an idea is, it can always be better, and I was hoping that LCF would offer me the safe space where by self-criticising my work, I would end up purifying my identity and aesthetic.
What was the starting point for your MA collection?
The MA collection, which is entitled “Massacre of the Innocents” focuses on the afterlife of clothing.
The inspiration originally came from the current talks about the death of couture and as the current demands in fashion are quite unrealistic when it comes to time and budget, I was looking into shaping a creative process that would somehow negate that.
So I began to research obsessively about couture techniques and fake luxury and focusing on handmade textiles, felt quite naturally; I was mostly interested in finding ways to create excitement and mimic extremely refined and polished fabrics by using the most rudimentary element, which is the thread.
How did it develop?
While working on it, I tried different types and weights of fabric and as I was constantly creating new garments I thought it was such a waste to just discard them and start from scratch, so I focused on ways to reuse them and integrate them in the newer work without making the recycling the central point of the collection.
Time is such a luxury right now, so I wanted to make sure that each garment will be extremely considered. Out of everything, failed ideas and garments ended up being the most inspiring in the end, and finding solutions to integrate a fairly cheap toile fabric into the collection and making it look expensive and unique, was really rewarding.
What sort of details can we expect?
I have handcrafted my own fabric for most of the pieces, and some of them were hand embroidered with wool and angora yarn.
By using quite a monastic palette, the soft colours of the frayed chiffon are a nice counterbalance to the rawness and nomad inspired overall aesthetic.
There’s a rebellious feel to the slightly poetic and historical silhouette, and as the interest was to create ghost-like versions of the fabrics and garments I had in the beginning there’s a temptation to touch each piece of cloth, as from a distance it reads as a completely different textile.
What songs did you have on repeat creating the collection?
Clint Mansell, Max Richter and Zebra Katz (and the random songs the girls living next to me would sing, loudly, from time to time)
What’s your favourite look?
The collection developed and got more refined and considered with each look, so at the moment I am mostly connected to the one that I’ve just finished, which is the fluffy black oversized coat with multi layered frayed patterned chiffon and trousers to match.
What are your hopes for the future?
Now that the course is over, I’m on the job hunt! There are some really interesting and radical things happening in the industry right now and it is really exciting thinking how everything will end up looking in 5 years time.
Lauren Lake
What drew you to LCF?
LCF has a real creative hub, it’s hard work but I knew the guidance I would get through the course would be really beneficial. I also got a fully funded scholarship to pay for my fees.
What was the starting point for your MA collection?
I became inspired by the dress and culture of the 1970s Slovakian Gypsies. The lifestyle they lived and how they expressed their emotion through dress. I wanted to create and design the concept of a strong powerful women, who can handle what is thrown at her in life. I also explored the traditional dress of female Inuits and how they put the garments together.
How did it develop?
This then developed, I started working on the stand and sketching. I created my own block patterns and then worked with these for the whole collection. I started to explore colour and texture, working with different mixes of tactile fabrics. This is when my obsession with stripe began, developing my own stripe. I explored different variations of the stripes and worked with the directions the stripes went in.
What sort of details can we expect?
Sequins embroidered faces are throughout the collection. Ruffles piped into seams. Lots of ties and bows and a lot of mixing of tactile fabrics and colours.
What songs did you have on repeat creating the collection?
I had a different mix of songs on repeat, but my top ones have to be ‘N.W.A – Straight Outta Compton and Express yourself’, ‘Salonge – Losing you’, ‘Amy Winehouse – Fuck me Pumps’, ‘Tony Bennett – Anything goes’, ‘Bonzai – Doses’ and obviously since Beyonce released ‘Formation’ It’s been on repeat.
What’s your favourite look?
I don’t have a favourite look as I really love every garment and the whole collection is really versatile. But my favourite garment has to be my blue leather faux pony skin coat.
What are your hopes for the future?
I am really looking forward to see what the future holds. I’m going to see what happens after the show.
Photography: Felix Cooper
Styling: Anders Sølvsten Thomsen
Casting: Madeleine Ostlie