MOST of us will be outdoors enjoying the first blast of warm sunshine this week, but for the final-year fashion and costume students at Edinburgh College of Art, springtime means staying cooped up in the studio, surviving on takeaways and very little sleep. These budding designers are frantically putting the finishing touches to their final collections in time for the college's annual fashion shows, which start tomorrow and run on three consecutive evenings.
It's an exciting time for Scottish fashion, with a wealth of young talent grabbing headlines. Scottish stars such as Jonathan Saunders and Deryck Walker are being joined by newer names including Aimee McWilliams, Louise Gray and Christopher Kane, who wowed the fashion press with his first three collections, and also created an affordable line for Topshop.
If proof were needed that the fashion world is taking Scotland's new generation of design talent seriously, this week it was announced that the third Scottish Fashion Awards, taking place at Stirling Castle next month, will be attended by a prestigious judging panel including fashion icon Daphne Guinness and Kate Phelan, the fashion director of British Vogue.
"I sat next to Christopher Kane at the Central Saint Martins graduate show in February last year – that's when it really struck me that Scotland was producing some of fashion's finest new talent," says Dolly Jones, editor of Vogue.com, another high-profile judge for the Scottish Fashion Awards. "He spent the entire show whispering to me about his fellow Scots who were lining up on the catwalk in front of us: Louise Gray, Scott Ramsay Kyle and Jamie Bruski Tetsill – it was incredibly impressive."
The creative industries are worth more than £5 billion to the Scottish economy and employ some 60,000 people, and this contribution has been rising steadily over the past decade. Fashion, and the textiles used in creating it, are an important part of this sector. With this in mind, Edinburgh College of Art is developing plans to create a Scottish Academy of Fashion.
"The Scottish Academy of Fashion will promote excellence in Scottish fashion and textiles, both nationally and internationally, through strong partnerships between academic institutions and industry," says Alan Murray, head of design at Edinburgh College of Art. "We also hope to work collaboratively with key organisations to ensure that young Scottish design talent is nurtured and retained in Scotland, and can make a valuable contribution to our creative industries."
With the curtain almost ready to rise on the first show, we caught up with three ECA students to ask them about their collections, their special brief to design a piece using fabric from Scottish textiles company Lochcarron, and their plans for the future.
• See
www.eca.ac.uk for show times and tickets.
'There are a lot of Scottish designers making a name for themselves, but they all had to go to London to do it'FASHION STUDENT
Richard Welch
Aged 21"I DIDN'T get to sleep at all last night because things are just mad at the moment, but this is one of the most exciting stages of the process. We're currently doing fittings and there are a few things still to finalise, but mainly I'm looking forward to Wednesday's first show.
For this collection, it all started from a photograph of an embroidered Art Deco jacket. I'm interested in detail and intricate pattern-cutting, and I wanted to achieve a similar level of detail to this particular jacket. I progressed to looking at 1980s science fiction films, and the finished collection looks very modern, with angular silhouettes. It's futuristic yet sophisticated – I was very keen to stay away from clichéd metallics when exploring this theme. It's a collection for the modern android: Autumn/Winter 2086.
For (our brief] to create a piece using a black check fabric from Lochcarron, we were asked to focus on tailoring and to (incorporate] other materials, while keeping the focus on the Lochcarron fabric. I looked at Japanese tailoring, and the 1960s, and I incorporated a shiny black synthetic fabric and Perspex tiles, teaming it all with a Perspex head-dress. It was great to have a very specific brief and to create something that's relatively wearable. It's a great one for my portfolio.
I'm only 21 and I still feel that I have loads to learn, so I'm going to take some time out and try to get a bit of experience before thinking about a postgraduate degree.
I've already worked with Giles Deacon and I'd like to spend some time with a smaller designer next. Bernard Wilhelm would be amazing. If I could choose any one designer, I'd like to work for Balenciaga one day. Nicholas Ghesquiere's designs are so fresh and wearable.
I think I'll be (working] in London next year, but I'd actually like to go to Paris one day because so many of the houses that I'd love to work for are based there. It would be nice to stay in Scotland, but I don't think it's very realistic. There are a lot of Scottish designers making a name for themselves at the moment, but they all had to go to London to do it. It's not my favourite city in the world, but I'm still really excited about the move."
'I'm really inspired by animals, particularly my two chickens'PERFORMANCE COSTUME STUDENT
Eleanor Kent
Aged 21"A LOT of people say to me that my work is a little macabre, but it's certainly not a conscious thing. For this show I looked at Dickens' Great Expectations and created three costumes and three puppets based around the characters of Miss Havisham, Miss Skiffins and Wemmick, for a historically based, animation-inspired film, and a stop-frame animation of Great Expectations.
I really love the way Dickens describes his characters. It's so illustrative; they're like characters from real-life fairy tales. Miss Havisham is just a dream character for me to look at, but I chose to focus on the eccentric couple Miss Skiffins and Wemmick as well, because in films and adaptations of the novel they don't often play a particularly prominent role, despite the fact that they're really interesting.
I wanted to design costumes in the style of animation, and after a visit to the Puppet Makers Mackinnon & Saunders, who created the puppets for Tim Burton's The Corpse Bride, I was keen to use puppets too.
The finished designs are very over-the-top, with almost cartoonish shapes, using mainly recycled fabrics – partly because I'm a poor student! I sourced and manipulated fabrics on different scales, to achieve the fantastical, illustrated style of the designs.
One of the fun parts of being a performance costume student is that the way the designs are exhibited to the audience is very important. Miss Havisham will shuffle down the catwalk like a crazy lady, while the other two will pretend not to notice each other until halfway through, much like their characters do in the novel. I'm really looking forward to seeing it all come together as one performance.
After I graduate, I'm keen to just keep learning. I've been studying taxidermy recently and I'd like to explore that a bit more, as well as looking at puppetry and animation. Working with a company like Mackinnon & Saunders would be my ultimate dream, but I'd also like to escape to the countryside and work a bit on costume as art, rather than for specific jobs. I'm really inspired by animals – particularly my two chickens, Mary and Joseph – so spending some time in the country would be a dream for me."
'I found my own way of embellishing the pieces. Rather than more traditional methods, I used pieces of electric cable …'
FASHION STUDENT
Abyssinia Sollitt-Davis
Aged 22"I'M ACTUALLY feeling more excited than nervous about the show itself. I've been mentally preparing myself for it for four years and I can't quite believe it's nearly here.
Last night was the first night that I got some decent sleep for quite a few days. It's exhausting, but exciting at the same time.
The inspiration for this collection stems from my name, Abyssinia, the original name for Ethiopia. I was researching text and I thought about my own name and African influences and from there I began to think about fusing African tribalwear with Italian tailoring. I looked at tribes from around the word, from Peru to Eastern Africa, but the finished work is very contemporary.
To modernise my designs, I found my own way of embellishing the pieces. Rather than more traditional methods, like beading and embroidery, I used pieces of electric cable. It was a great material to work with and I'm really pleased with the overall effect. The show will open with a special tailoring and accessories collection created from a range of Scottish fabrics by Lochcarron. Each of us had to create one outfit utilising the fabric, and I decided to look to nature for my inspiration.
I'm inspired by nature and the elements in general – I love the way colour combinations and forms in nature work so well – and in this instance I looked at tornados and wind.
The finished design is quite wild, with a gathered waist. It was really good fun to create and a nice distraction from my collection. It was pretty challenging, because I used a checked fabric and I had to ensure that the checks always matched up. Tricky, but a real learning curve.
It's been an incredible four years for me at the ECA. I'm from London, but I came up here because the college has such a good reputation.
My confidence in my ideas and designs has grown immensely and I'm just looking forward to the next step now. I'd like to do a masters at the Royal College of Art, but I'm keen to get a bit of experience before I explore that route. I've been approached by MaxMara and Burberry, and I'd love to work for Paul Smith. My dream would probably be to work for Etro in Italy."
The full article contains 1727 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
