Contrasting, haughty, sometimes unscrupulous: London is the home of pure experimentation made of creation and mystification of the concept of dress. A place capable of attracting young designers who choose it as the principle of their creative path, also thanks to the training courses that the English capital offers, remaining, even in the future, the ideal scenario in which to express themselves. And so London Fashion Week, in its institutional nature, lends itself to new names that are experiencing the system for the first time by being part of it.
From Molly Goddard to Stefan Coke, but also the internationals JW Anderson and Raf Simons: they are all names that have made London their birthplace and still now the setting for collections with a ” British touch ”. But what are the names that, despite appearances on the calendar, media coverage, and international coverage, we still don’t hear enough?
This is a short list of those who deserve attention, even just a glance, because they often speak and just as often are not fully understood.
Harri
Playful, ironic but also thoughtful and temporal: the Harri brand moves in an indefinite space, drawing from the 60s for shapes and prints and from the 80s for contrasting constructions. A futurism that is anything but practical, reminiscent of the first Courreges collections, where the dress was part of the scenography, but which in Harri changes into a scene with curved shapes like her balloon trousers. The designer of the same name invites us to observe reality with the eyes of the absurd, of the possible, reminding anyone that an imaginary that is incomprehensible on the outside is hidden inside, which is one’s own and personal.
Chet Lo
The three-dimensionality of the dress is one of its hallmarks and with its protruding sweaters it redefines the physicality of the body. His aesthetic is the encounter between West and East in a modernist narrative, which harks back to the author’s old science fiction movies, also including some contemporary queer currents. Definitely current, the message behind every Chet Lo collection is the same, that of never ceasing to discover and imagine oneself different.
Feben
In Feben, innovation even before being in the shape, is in the texture and patterns chosen. A ” recovered ” aesthetic, which uses the liveliness of fabrics to support a ” reuse ” fashion, whose materials come from faraway places. From South America to the East, his is a composite imagery that meets surrealism, and an escapism, that is, that continuous search for a safe place, a search that derives from his personal experiences. A refugee for years, for her designer her collections are born to guide the woman, accompanying her wherever she wants.
Eudon Choi
So formal and tailor-made that the entire Saville Road seems to look at EudonChoi with admiration. An imaginary where gender is confused and leaves room for a slight femininity that is sometimes masculine, with deconstructed shirts and dresses that show a predominant fluidity in cuts and proportions. For the British brand, the tradition of the United Kingdom, made up of tailored suits and local costumes, is a source of pride and must be preserved, almost kept in the collections of those who, for now, carry on the name of ” Made in UK ”. Certainly a common name for the London calendar, already resonant among the media, but which still does not recognize itself at the helm of the new generation.
Susan Fang
As in a fairy tale dressed in drapery and rosy hues, for Susan Fang the dress has the task of projecting on every woman her fragile, childish side hidden behind superstructures that contemporary society imposes. An invitation to return to childhood, to experiment on oneself by imagining something else, as if everyone were the author and interpreter of their own disillusioned comedy. A disenchanted ending that reminds its audience of how much the fragility of the ego is a precious asset to each collection, where each dress is an example of its own inner order.
Dilara Findikoglu
There is no sensuality without a body. In Dilara Findikoglu the music of the curved lines of female physicality alternate with the stupefied silence of eros. In a few, but already known, collections she managed to unseat man’s critical judgment in favor of one of a comfortable and uninhibited eroticism that moves away from the stereotype of the explicit nude to meet a more perceptive one of uses and custoda. Everything is veiled behind mini suits of slipped lurex and calm transparencies, which conceal the earthly myth of the body as desire.
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