Top image: Abigail Coop’s Graduate collection. Photo by Perry Gibson

With a list of award-winners boasting Christopher Bailey, Stella McCartney and Coach’s Stuart Vevers, fashion turns to Graduate Fashion Week for up-and-coming talent. Last week, the newest crop of graduates studying courses from menswear and womenswear to digital print and knitwear made their first foray on the catwalk. From the thousands of students, spanning a near 70 universities across the UK, the line-up was whittled down to the brightest twenty-five for the exclusive Graduate Gala Show.

Of course, setting the stage for London Fashion Week Men’s, the show was an apt reminder of how the menswear category has developed in the past few years and it offered up a welcoming insight into what we can expect next. The gala was a melting pot of ideas and inspirations, all contrasting from one student to the next. Fresh from their Graduate Fashion Week debut, we talk technique, politics and spontaneity with a trio of GFW’s most exciting young designers.

“There are a lot of elements to the collection such as exaggerated silhouettes that take form and shape through merino wool-tops, set against light, natural fibres such as silk and monofilament. However, I deliberately used knit structures created on both domestic and dubied knit machines, to make these elements feel harmonious.

Initially I set out to look at the body – the biological starting point of gender definition. I later became fascinated with the skin, even in its most delicate form it takes on the role of protector cross-gender – and I wanted to celebrate this as a common point in my collection. Skin and flesh-coloured hues became central to my colour palette and fabric selection. Markings, whether it be scars or wrinkles dress our bodies. The skin can be opened, but can – and will – close again. This idea of re-making, of materials being stitched back up to take on new form and shape became pivotal to the collection. Instead of doing cross-stitch marks, I wanted something softer and decided to weave plaits with sheer knitted fabrics, finding a new way of sewing up and finding a form.”  

“My design process began last summer whilst I was living around the corner from Wall Street. I’d leave early for work and stop to watch the investment bankers as they made their way into work on Wall Street. It almost felt like consumerism was beckoning at them as they moved ever closer every day towards wealth. The top 1% of the country’s bankers hide at the top of their towers, fuelling a system designed to make them richer and the poorer, well poorer. I wanted to underline this, it’s omnipresent and perhaps more relevant today than ever before.

My approach was a conceptual one, enhancing and exaggerating volume and size to amplify this notion of masculinity and ultimately the alpha-male. It was also important to highlight the twofold nature of the clothes these men would wear as they marched to work, hiding beneath tailored jackets that on the one hand signify wealth, but also conceal corrupt secrets in their lining.”

“Resettlement is an exploration of the works of Dorothea Lange – an American photojournalist and documentarian – and her study of the Farm Security Administration throughout the Great Depression.

I think Lange’s images really capture the hardships felt throughout the Great Depression, and this sense of struggle can be felt in the garments worn by the workmen in her photographs. Everything was made and used to be fit for purpose and I tried to reflect this by recycling, reusing and tying old elements together to create something new. The collection was subject to trial and error. It was an organic process and a large proportion of my time was spent ‘testing’, working out which materials function well together and how.”