Thomas Tait S/S 2015

Fashion model with black and cream dress — (Image credit: Jason Lloyd-Evans)

Given that the fashion pack historically descends upon London to unearth new talent - and that more and more of the city's creative engines are now being backed by a luxury goods conglomerate - you can easily envisage the buzz surrounding Thomas Tait's show after he won LVMH's Young Fashion Designer Prize earlier this year. Upon arriving at the Canadian's show space - a near condemned, surely asbestos-abundant building - the talent-hunting hoards wondered just what he'd done with the prize money. As it turns out, he'd chosen the destitute, concrete venue to host the work of French visual artist Georges Rousse (who takes over abandoned spaces for his meticulous colour-blocked shape and typography installations). Therefore, picking up on Rousse's painted colour serge, Tait set off with double-faced, dual hue silk satin dresses, which built to become more angular, and even protruding, as his colour saturation point turned from primary to neon. Concertina pleating and scrunched techno fabrics also added to the collection's dramatic architecture, which depicted an overall stiffness in spite of the its draped silk mainstays and flapping, checkerboard patchworks. Maybe it was the way his models walked head-on into concrete corners, before abruptly stopping and changing directions, their frameless glasses, or poker-straight hair that possessed one haphazard kink, but all tolled, there was untapped energy at play here. And not just because the show space had live wires sticking out of wall slaps here, there and everywhere.

fashion model with dress and white dress

Jack Moss is the Fashion & Beauty Features Director at Wallpaper*, having joined the team in 2022 as Fashion Features Editor. Previously the digital features editor at AnOther and digital editor at 10 Magazine, he has also contributed to numerous international publications and featured in ‘Dazed: 32 Years Confused: The Covers’, published by Rizzoli. He is particularly interested in the moments when fashion intersects with other creative disciplines – notably art and design – as well as championing a new generation of international talent and reporting from international fashion weeks. Across his career, he has interviewed the fashion industry’s leading figures, including Rick Owens, Pieter Mulier, Jonathan Anderson, Grace Wales Bonner, Christian Lacroix, Kate Moss and Manolo Blahnik.