Daniele Toneatti's Yellow Magic Orchestra collection is a smart mix of skewed proportions in colourful, minimal menswear. The influence of an internship at Raf Simons is evident, but the designer's sense of humour shines through with graphic motifs appropriated from German techno iconography.
The ten tenacious fashion talents profiled here are already well on their way with graduate collections that dare to be different.
Fashion: Zoë Sinclair; Writer: Dan Thawley; Photography: Nicole Maria Winkler
Shakhnoza Rizkieva is dedicated to hands-on creation and challenging the industry’s production and accelerated turn-over of ideas. She sketches, drapes, cuts and sews all her clothes alone, using contrast tailoring stitches and rough edges to highlight the structures of her folded, origami-like pieces and retain an inherent sense of deconstruction.
The Renaissance concerns of transience and ephemera were apparently on Eva Buehler’s mind when crafting the gleaming, sculpted pieces of her graduate collection; clothes meant to evoke the bodily concerns of Flemish vanitas paintings. Perspex accessories accent the retro-meets-baroque mood, working with glossy textiles to transmit Buehler’s pointed message of superfluity.
Lisa Sänger’s menswear questions our contemporary mores, including the commodification of time. Each outfit is embedded with disparate and idiosyncratic design features; one cycling jersey spells ‘slow down’ on the sleeves, a shawl collar coat is disrupted by laser-cut grids, and a bomber jacket bristles like a tufted, logoed tapestry.
Drew Henry looked towards his homeland for his MA collection, taking the natural gradient of springbok skins as the starting point for a comprehensive capsule wardrobe. The South African designer worked tirelessly with heat-bonding and embossing techniques to ensure exquisite construction – the kind he continues to explore in his current internship at Céline.
The connection between the Finnish and their idyllic landscapes is not lost on Elina Määttänen, whose work is bristling with organic textures. An affinity with Japan also comes into play, with the principles of wabi-sabi interior design applied to her garments – explaining the peeling, imperfect layers and hanging yarn that combine with metallic silk, leather and pleated knitwear for a rub of the rough and the polished.
