LONDON — The Central Saint Martins MA program has produced the likes of Harris Reed, Tolu Coker, Connor Ives and Daniel Lee. This year’s graduating class turned out designs produced without the typical pattern-cutting and sewing techniques.
Here, WWD spotlights Macy Grimshaw, Grey Buscemi, Yodea Marquel Williams Braham, Ivan Delogu Senes and Oli Clarke, who took inspiration from family heritage and historical influences.
Macy Grimshaw
A look from Macy Grimshaw.
Courtesy of Central Saint Martin
Macy Grimshaw is inspired by the everyday, from graffiti to charred cigarette butts. The Hong Kong-born designer captures London’s unseen beauty and also pays homage to her grandparents by molding leather into skirt suits, faux-denim pants, tops and dresses.
“I always try to make things from the point of view of someone having Alzheimer’s, in the sense that you’re looking around, and things are familiar, but also unfamiliar,” she said. “Things I see every day, but just don’t appreciate or realize, can be really beautiful.”
Images taken across London were printed onto vegetable-tanned leather, which Grimshaw shaped to resemble garage shutters, pencil shavings and rusted chain-link fences.
While designing the collection, both of Grimshaw’s grandparents died, a loss that deeply shaped her work. A red silk dress overlaid with peeling paper was dedicated to her grandmother, which Grimshaw said was “like a poster ripping back from the wall, going through layers and layers of memory.”
Etched handwritten engravings ran across the surface of a leather dress, resembling the bark of a family tree. Into the leather, Grimshaw inscribed family names, birthdays and love letters to her grandparents — words she never had the chance to say.
Grey Buscemi
A look from Grey Buscemi.
Courtesy of Central Saint Martin
Grey Buscemi’s garments are not sewn. Instead, his retro-inspired dresses, tops and skirts are made using laser-cutter machines that produce strips of paper that fit together like puzzle pieces.
Inspired by early wooden airplanes, the American designer used natural materials such as calico, wax-finished plywood, and silks that complement the fragile, knit-like paper. “I was looking for tactical inspiration. I saw all of the ways that aviation was similar to clothing, and all the insights I could draw from it. It seemed perfect,” he said.
Buscemi noted that inventors like the Wright Brothers would sew fabric patterns tailored to wooden planes. “If you know how a corset works, you get boning, then you put fabric over it, and it creates structure. Just like how they created planes,” he marveled.
The young designer has ambitions to develop techniques with other materials, including leather. “You don’t always have to put it together by hand,” he said. “There’s potential to incorporate some of the technology that we use for mass-producing knitting. I think with enough time, you could make a machine for anything.”
Ivan Delogu Senes
A look from Ivan Delogu Senes.
Courtesy of Central Saint Martin
Drawing on his pastoral upbringing in Sardinia, Ivan Delogu Senes hand-spun wool from his family’s sheep into yarn, producing a hand knit featuring a variety of stitches.
He also told tales about how Sardinian women’s clothing evolved from traditional costumes to more functional, modest attire, such as high-neck tops, long dresses, vests and hand-pleated skirts.
The physical effects of the moon served as a metaphor.
“It’s about the moon cycles and how the cycles are believed to influence bodies, spaces and environments,” he said. “In that same way, I feel like Sardinian women act without imposition in a much more subtle approach.
“Modesty was one way of survival, and it reshaped spirituality, respectability, and labor of these women,” he mused.
Senes experimented with gravity and curves, using foam to sculpt garments reflecting the moon’s roundness.
He plans a digital presentation during Milan Fashion Week and aims to launch his own brand.
Yodea Marquel Williams Braham
A look from Yodea Marquel Williams Braham.
Courtesy of Central Saint Martin
Braham’s collection asked the question: Why should one individual dictate where souls go in the afterlife?
Braham drew inspiration from the 1898 painting “The Sea of Acheron” by Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl, which depicts the Greek god Hermes taking lost souls to hell. He said, “Humanity has an obsession with purity. I think this image really represents that well, that some people think that they are wrong and some people aren’t, and they end up in this dark place.”
In the painting, darkness is broken by a figure in bright turquoise silk, which inspired the collection’s tension between traditional religious ideals and personal spiritual beliefs. Braham showed these differences through their clothing, using pure, new fabrics against previously owned items they found on the streets of London.
Braham sourced iron and opal locally to feel what it was like to hand-dye garments, just like the Puritans did in the 1600s. “You never know what you’re gonna get. But I think it’s a part of the process and what it creates. I let the story and the research dictate what it becomes.”
Oli Clarke
A look from Oli Clarke.
Courtesy of Central Saint Martin
Found objects are at the root of Oli Clarke’s design process, whether it’s knick-knacks, buttons or antiques he scours at markets.
“You get an object, and you think about what that means, or what it has meant to people. I play with that, and either turn it against that meaning or make it even more noticeable. I respond to the object that I find,” the British designer said. “It’s very instinctive. Slowly, it all starts trickling into place by making stuff and mixing it together in a certain way. By the end, it all makes sense.”
In his collection, his own old, dirty T-shirts were layered with new materials. “I like it when you can’t tell what is new and what is old. Also, like actively making the new things look old, and the old things look new,” he said.
Linebacker shoulder pads were among the striking design details.
