London Fashion Week starts in less than 24 hours, but, rather than doing a preview of my favourite designers who will present their new collections this week, I want to focus on three young designers that yesterday took part in the “Fashion In Motion” live catwalk event at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. Entitled “Next Fashion in Motion”, the event featured the work of three new designers, all graduates of Central Saint Martins, Kinga Malisz, Felipe Rojas-Llanos and Alithia Spuri-Zampetti. The three young designers are dramatically different one from the other, yet they are all equally talented.
Kinga Malisz’s graduate collection featured tight fitting nude dresses wrapped up in clouds of transparent black fabric that at times created an elegant effect, at others rigidly wrapped the body, creating architectural motifs and wing-like structures. Forming cocoon-like shapes, the black fabric gave new volume to the outfits.
Felipe Rojas-Llanos was instead inspired by the story of “The Little Prince”, creating a linear menswear collection featuring formal black outfits, jackets and cropped trousers with coloured details and accessories in yellow, purple and blue. Rojas-Llanos seems to draw his inspirations from Jil Sanders’ clean-cut and precise creations.
The winner of the 2008 L’Oréal Professionnel Award and the recipient of the ITS7 Maria Luisa Award, Alithia Spuri-Zampetti favours block coloured suits, dresses and skirts that she presented with huge cut-out foam headdresses with graphic details.
A while back the young designer did placements as assistant at Gareth Pugh, Alexander McQueen and Viktor & Rolf and she somehow seems to have absorbed Pugh’s quirkiness, McQueen’s theatricality and V&R’s originality, mixing them all with her own inspirations. In her graduate collection, Spuri-Zampetti was inspired by the flower motifs of the Japanese Furisode, a colourful style of kimonos, mixing them with ’50s silhouettes, high-waisted pencil skirts and sculpted dresses with bold shoulders and voluminous sleeves.
The colourful stylised elements from kimonos are mixed with the complex three-dimensional paths of Tadao Ando’s architectures, creating a sort of oxymoronic effect between fragile and solid elements, while the precise graphic patterns featuring geometric shapes seem to jump out of the outfits. Alithia Spuri-Zampetti will present her collection in Paris at Maria Luisa Boutique in October.
In the meantime, we can only hope that the London Fashion Week catwalks will bring on the same great ideas, quality and cutting-edge experimentation that these young designers have introduced into their collections.
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