Emma Hardstaff RCA Womenswear

Images by RCA/Dominic Tschudin

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Thursday 29 May 2014

 

@RCAevents #RCAfashion

                     www.rca.ac.uk/show2014                     

 

2014 ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART GRADUATE FASHION SHOW

 

Students from the Royal College of Art’s prestigious MA Fashion programme presented their final collections to press and trade today (Thursday 29 May 2014).

A Menswear collaboration with bespoke Italian label Brioni opened the show in sartorial style. Now in its seventh year, this tailoring project set first-year students the task of re-imagining the classic suit.

The catwalk show featured 30 collections by students specialising in Menswear, Womenswear, and Knitwear. A further static display at the entrance featured work by four students from Footwear, Accessories and Millinery.

This year’s Womenswear collections include exciting architectural pieces with a highly constructed aesthetic, while Menswear are experimenting with a more minimalist feel. Inspirations include 1950’s Nevada ‘Doom Town’, cartoon death, Arctic dress, Japanese kimonos and Luton football strip.

Graduates will be hoping to follow in the footsteps of a new generation of RCA fashion alumni who have set up their own labels in the UK. Recent RCA graduates include Erdem, Holly Fulton, Eudon Choi, Christopher Raeburn, Sophia Webster and menswear designers James Long, Katie Eary, Matthew Miller, Aitor Throup and Astrid Andersen.

Founded by former Vogue editor Madge Garland in 1948 and led by Professor Wendy Dagworthy OBE since 1998, the highly acclaimed programme has helped train many successful designers working at the top of the fashion industry – Christopher Bailey at Burberry, Clare Waight Keller at Chloé, Peter Copping at Nina Ricci and Heikki Salonen at Diesel.

This year’s Show had a fresh new look and layout by creative agency My Beautiful City, who have designed shows for Vivienne Westwood, Julien Macdonald and the British Fashion Awards.