ROTTINGDEAN BAZAAR

After moving to the seaside village of Rottingdean, Central St Martins’ MA Fashion graduates James Theseus Buck and Luke Brooks began to collaborate on an innovative project – Rottingdean Bazaar. The showcase presents clothing, accessories, homeware, art and installations (among other things) made by the eccentric design duo. At Fashion East, they presented their first collection of clothing, featuring an array of everyday objects sealed and fused onto garments, including sports socks, cigarettes and ash, hotel slippers, balloons (both blown-up and wilted) and even carrots and human hair. Their badge project (@badgetaste) was given a full corner of their presentation, and were decorated with tights, passport pictures and plasters among other everyday items. Rottingdean Bazaar represents the wonder in finding the beauty and artistic potential in the everyday.

RORY PARNELL MOONEY

After working with both Fashion East and MAN, Rory Parnell Mooney has gone from strength to strength each season. Mixing influences from cultures and rebellious spirits, Rory Parnell Mooney creates almost non-gendered clothing that is both poetry in motion, and that expresses his concerns with the modern world. For his SS17 presentation, the models stood in front of wall hangings designed by Harriet Middleton-Baker, exploring spirituality and the nature of the physical body. Continuing to take inspiration from the ecclesiastical, Parnell Mooney also looked towards queer kids, the movement of artists to Berlin, and the ritual of dressing every day and the ceremony that can come with it. A core palette consisting of bright red, black and white kept the focus on the construction of the clothes. Dresses and and check shirts were kept together with intricate stitching, ties and knots, with a checked monochrome jacket balancing against the the frayed, layered black trousers and classic high-top black Converse.

LUKE STEVENS

Only mere days after his Royal College of Art graduate show, Luke Stevens staged his first presentation with Fashion East. The recent graduate made a statement from the off, as one of the models was lying, wrapped in metallic trousers, on the unfinished wooden floor. With a white mesh top, with sleeves stretching just beyond the models fingers, and red straps holding down layers of beige, dark brown and dark yellow fabric (the effect was rather like a wilted hamburger), Steven’s pieces were unexplainable, but definite works of art. A broken primary school chair lay in pieces next him, whilst his another garment on display was suspended from a brass lampshade. Made of again of white mesh, flesh-coloured drapes and metallic trouser legs, Stevens attached a wrap of the white mesh to one leg and let it trail and pool across the floor. Despite being fresh out of school, Luke Stevens is definitely one to watch.