As we anticipated yesterday, London continues to consolidate as the cradle of emerging talent and of proposals that promise to challenge the foundations on which the fashion industry is based. And the first presentation of London Fashion Week second day, starring Nick Palmer-led brand, N Palmer, @npalmerstudio is a good example of this. His debut collection makes fashion a kaleidoscope with all the colors of the rainbow, recreating endless optical effects and geometric shapes resulting from the designer’s reconnection with his inner child during the lockdown. Collection 1 is committed to reused fabrics and patchwork, in a proposal in which music takes special prominence in the form of singles such as Here Comes the Sun or The Orchids. Unique pieces that are intended to make the end customer wonder where they come from and what their origins are. In short, a way of understanding fashion with a powerful meaning.
The idea of surrealism applied to fashion presented by Ray Chu @raychustudios shares creativity with the previous one but presents a much darker and more enigmatic universe. Chapter II: Centipede Love combines scenes typical of mystery cinema in which the haunting music makes us pay close attention to the screen, with a catwalk created from computer-generated images, in collaboration with the artist Pigo Lin. Sexuality, Asian culture, and the questioning of one’s identity as a way to move towards a more open-minded society are part of a collection that the brand refers to as a mixture of the old with the new, a formula that results in a plural future free of stereotypes.
In a calendar full of experimental shows and presentation formats far removed from the classic runways, the Korean designer MAXXIJ, @maxxij_official who graduated from the London College of Fashion, stars one of the shows closest to the pre-pandemic reality, in which we do see models walking through an industrial installation in a ten minutes video. But, far from being a traditional collection, Future Blood combines art and fashion through menswear structures, in which the savoir-faire of the designer awarded as “Best Designer” by Seoul Fashion Week 2020 is evidenced in new materials and styles with a marked experimental accent. The uniform for the new fashion era seems to be a reality.
Acclaimed Chilean designer Lupe Gajardo founded her namesake brand more than a decade ago. Now, having presented her work in New York, Berlin, or London, she unveils her first ready-to-wear collection, transferring her characteristic zero-waste pattern to a more accessible and functional area in fashion, in an adventure that the creator herself admits not to have been easy due to the problems derived from the pandemic. She takes us into a day of work in the audiovisual piece, in all the part of the creative process that the spectators do not usually see. Lupe makes honesty and empathy her great allies in a new way of presenting her collection, which allows us to better understand her creative universe, showing us the passion she feels for her work. We could say this is a more human fashion.
Ahluwalia is one of those brands that does not stop surpassing itself. Traces, their Fall/Winter 2021 collection, disassociates from physical performances in a short film directed by Stephen Isaac Wilson in collaboration with musician Cktrl. Brotherhood, union and mutual support are some values on which her new proposal is built, inspired by the book Homegoing, which made the designer rethink the idea of the past and the present. The brand advances by leaps and bounds, always respecting the DNA that captivated the public and the specialized critics.
Capsule 001: Thin Ice is the first collection that Liam Hodges presents since lockdown. The luxury streetwear brand only takes one minute to present its new proposal, which is markedly minimalist in terms of presentation format. A rotating platform in a room free of artifice and ornaments in which the different looks are unveiled, for which vintage materials have been used to reduce the environmental impact to the maximum. This is possibly the collection that best represents the need to slow down the pace in the fashion industry.
