Spotlighting 4 Designers From LCF’s Class Of 2020.
Music by: ONE. Image credit: Cleo Luana.
It’s CULTED.
The shock of COVID-19 forced graduating fashion students across the country to return home and complete their final collection under lockdown. CULTED caught up with 4 stand out fashion design students from London College of Fashion’s Class of 2020 to discover more about their collections.
First up, BA Womenswear design student Maria Gemra, aims to bring positive change to the fashion industry by touching on consumption, feminism and mental health through her designs. Gemra mainly uses one (sometimes two) pieces of fabric to create her work which she says cut down the production time drastically and makes her collection not just sustainable but also affordable.
“It’s a solution to expensive sustainable fashion and cheap and destructive fast fashion,” she said.
Another BA Womenswear design student to champion sustainability in their designs is Angus Cockram. Cockram puts the success of completing his digital line up down to the 4 o’clock coffees he shared over houseparty each day with his friends from the studio. “It gave me reassurance when it was all disrupted” he said.
Through his collection, Cockram questions what we project and create as human bodies in the digital world and uses unconventional materials to change perceptions of sustainable designs. Transparency within fashion is important to Cockram and he believes the “representation that a brand holds is reflective in your self-identity”.
Our third designer is BA Fashion Design and Technology student, Cleo Luana. Her collection, called ‘THE LIFE CHOSE ME’, is tailored through Luana’s lens of her Angolan heritage living in London.
“The people who surrounded me growing up were also stereotyped and cliched throughout society,” Luana told CULTED, and as well as influencing her character, have now come to influence her collection. Alongside her collection, Luana created a buckle making guide with the intention of reiterating the DIY approach for those, “who grew up in an environment similar to mine” she said.
Our fourth and final designer is BA Fashion Design and Development student, Ringo Wang. Looking to a film directed by Sergei Parajanov which reflects a unique worldview and unreal sense of spacetime, Wang was inspired to create his own world view through his collection.
“I access the subconscious parts of the mind”, said Wang. “I would say it is a dark version of Alice in Wonderland, however, my version is more like a wandering poet’s never-ending hallucination”.
Throughout his process, Wang focused on creating textile samples. “I developed three different textiles from the same fabric and utilised these in the whole garment”, he said, “it makes me feel like the whole garment belongs to me, so satisfying”.
So guys which of this year’s graduates stood out to you? Drop their @ below!
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See also: SPOTLIGHTING 5 DESIGNERS FROM CSM’S CLASS OF 2020
See also: UAL LAUNCHES FIRST EVER DIGITAL SHOWCASE SPANNING ALL COLLEGES
