In a recent interview published on 1 Granary, a collaborative magazine uniting students from Central Saint Martins, The Royal College of Art, Parsons, and Antwerp's Royal Academy, Simon Ungless, Executive Director at the Academy of Art University School of Fashion in San Francisco, spoke about various issues linked with the modern fashion industry, including social media and celebrity fashion, things that often contribute to give us the distorted impression that everybody can easily become a fashion designer.
The most important point Ungless makes, though, is about education: "We are setting them up for an industry that doesn't exist," he says about students and institutions, a statement that can be considered as rather controversial, especially when we consider Ungless is a lecturer and a former CSM grad who was taught by Louise Wilson.
Yet Ungless is extremely honest in what he says: many universities all over the world seem to encourage their students to focus on the final shows, all efforts and energies aim at that one final goal. A scholarship, a prize or a collaboration may follow, together with some media reports hailing a student as "the next big thing", but, after six months, nothing happens and the media will have moved onto another name, the previous one forgotten, and the endless game of musical chairs continues.
Ungless - who recounts in the interview his early collaborations with Alexander McQueen when he used to create the fabrics and the young McQueen would design the clothes - seems to favour another approach, encouraging recruiters to visit the university and finding ways to match them with students. In a way this is a more logical conclusion to a fashion course and would also encourage students to learn more about the production side of things, possibly from the actual factory floor.
Which brings us to London Fashion Week and to one of the opening shows - Matty Bovan: exuberant and a bit crazy, joyful and representing a celebratory mood in a country slipping down the dark alley of Brexit day by day, Bovan is the last punk in London after Vivienne Westwood (sitting with her husband Andreas Kronthaler in the front row at Bovan's runway show).
Inspired by filmmaker Derek Jarman, Bovan came up with a collection that was a riot of colours: layered tulle Dior-on-acid crinolined gowns covered with ribbons and crocheted elements or jersey dresses that seemed to explode from within with masses of tulle were accessorised with gigantic head-dresses by Stephen Jones in which a mini-kitchen sink drama was unfolding.
Jones created indeed gravity-defying hats incorporating trellises, gardening gloves, artificial flowers, sushi platters, feather dusters, plungers and a wide assortment of other domestic utensils.
Bovan scribbled on workwear overalls, collaged fabrics together with cheap sewing machines (or maybe with a glue gun...) and printed on some of them bold messages such as "Infinite Void".
Based on pure DIY techniques, Bovan's show was a call for creativity to fight the pains of austerity and the perilous road to Brexit, these are clothes you may want to wear at the people's march on 20th October against Brexit to reclaim London as a hotbed of innovation and freedom, a capital that should be representing cosmopolitanism and not narrow-mindedness.
That said, as they stand, these clothes are more or less useless as they are not wearable and therefore not commercial: there is something with potential among this chaotic riot - the knitwear in bold and bright colours and crazy patterns - but it is still done in a very amateurish way.
Bovan should indeed be kidnapped and locked into a yarn factory or a knitwear manufacturing plant for 6 months where he may develop real knowledge about this sector of the industry. His creativity would emerge reinvigorated by the industrial know-how he is clearly missing.
If he doesn't do so, Bovan will keep on doing student-y runways until he is eventually co-opted by Vivienne Westwood becoming his punk heir (his collections reek of Westwood's historical anachronisms revised through the punk perspective with some Galliano thrown in).
At the moment somebody else has co-opted Bovan: the models sported bags by Coach that featured his artworks. Though already available at Matchesfashion.com, they do not look extremely innovative (hopefully the giant bumbag to wear as a shoulder bag will remain a showpiece...) and do not add anything new to the accessory discourse, looking like ordinary monogrammed bags with some crazy coloured patterns and details added. Yes, they may help Bovan making a bit of money to sustain his label and his dreams, but, before hopping onto his next collaboration, he may want to refocus and gather more experience from manufacturers or his story risks of going down the Meadham Kirchhoff road.
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