Anyone with a passing interest in fashion knows that Central Saint Martins is the conduit through which generations of talent have passed on their way to becoming some of the most influential designers in the world. In particular, the head-spinning list of alumni from the M.A. course is a who’s who of era-defining stars; but just as remarkable about this London institution are the hundreds of graduates each year from across every fashion-related pathway who go on to work behind the scenes in the industry, whether as senior talent in the ateliers of major Paris fashion houses, or across the numerous other, less-remarked-upon facets that make up the industry, from media to event production.
And many of those up-and-comers come from the B.A. course, which is better known as a forum where young designers are yet to worry about the pressures of commercial constraints, and can instead let their freak flags fly. The latest showcase of that spirit, held in the cavernous central hall of the former granary building in King’s Cross that is now the university’s hub, didn’t disappoint on the wackiness front: Andy Pomarico’s eye-popping carnival floats festooned with flotsam and jetsam found on dumpster dives, with a witchy model in green body paint swinging through a doorway in the center, certainly saw to that; as did Linus Stueben’s Y2K-on-acid extravaganza that featured fabric patches resembling toilet rolls stuck to the heels of furry boots, track pants that were pulled down to the calves and then stitched to stay there, and a model walking a robot dog on a leash—complete with a kitschy pink collar, naturally. (A special mention, too, for Matthew David Andrews’s kaleidoscopic, wind-blown ladies caught in inclement weather, whose hats turned out to be hiding mini water sprinklers; what could have felt gimmicky ended up having an eerily post-apocalyptic air.)
Yet many of the most interesting collections threaded the needle between high visual impact and more subtle messaging. Just take Timisola Shasanya’s fascinating eye for proportion, warping scale and shape—shirts piled up around the neck like a kind of shrug, or a top that was artfully draped to rise up behind the model on a six-foot long rod like a ship’s sail—to create pieces that spoke to a childhood spent between Lagos and London, as well as to wider conversations around migration, all achieved with supreme elegance. Or the refined playfulness of Marie Schulze’s grown-up outerwear crafted from wide strips of raw silk, streams of fabric bursting from handbags or through the toes of shoes to the sound of a manic orchestral soundtrack.
A particular standout was the work of Ayham Hassan, a student from Ramallah in the West Bank who crowdfunded his way to Central Saint Martins and produced a powerful collection that showcased the astonishing beauty of Palestinian craft, and went back to artisanal traditions whose roots have been displaced by conflict. (Hassan described the collection as “a contemplation on the reality of genocide and the quest for liberation”; it felt especially resonant given the groups of students protesting for Palestine outside of the show venue.) There were metallic, armor-like triangles that spoke to traditional designs offering a form of spiritual protection, as well as an extraordinary piece paying homage to the village of Abu Shusha that was destroyed in the 1940s, fusing geometric patches of historic woven patterns from the region with layers of distressed organza; meanwhile, an enormous length of textile in gray and magenta, here worn as a floor-sweeping headscarf, had actually been knitted by Hassan’s own mother. “My mum can’t make it today obviously, because she’s in the West Bank,” he said before the show. “So with this, it feels like she’s here.”
The evening’s top three prizes, which were judged by Burberry’s Daniel Lee—who sat front row at the show, tapping his foot to the madcap pick-and-mix of musical soundtracks selected by the students—all went to worthy winners. The second runner-up was Haseeb Hassan, a British-Pakistani designer whose sophisticated designs were impressive. Taking inspiration from sources spanning everything from Madame Grès’s draping to vintage Pakistani postage stamps, he confidently distilled them into a collection that married graphic impact with exceptional craftsmanship: his riff on a South Asian shalwar kameez, here cut from a dusty blue leather and decorated with Arabic calligraphy, was a highlight, as was a closing look in a drapey, pleated white fabric that featured abstracted green motifs that echoed the Pakistani flag. “What mattered most for me was collaboration,” Hassan said after the show, noting that he worked with artisans in Pakistan to produce the shoes, crochet prayer caps, and woven tassel drawstrings. “It was a way to honor their craft and ensure the collection stayed grounded in where I come from.”
The first runner-up prize went to Hannah Smith, whose thoughtful approach to adaptive fashion was showcased in a collection that took inspiration from the curlicue details on wrought-iron gates to create pieces that “use the wheelchair as an asset, or a fluid extension of the body,” she said before the show. Just as striking were her technical experiments, slicing leather into knotted ribbons that floated behind the models with a feather-light ease, or cutting and draping a traditional woolen tailoring fabric across the back of a wheelchair to form an elegant train.
Finally, the evening’s boldest—and certainly biggest—moment came courtesy of the American designer Myah Hasbany, whose delightfully bizarre concept was inspired by a tall tale of a UFO crash that took place in her home state of Texas. She imagined the alien ship as a kind of underground radioactive force that had caused the local population to mutate into weird and wonderful forms, including grotesquely glamorous black pumps sprouting multiple heels, and some seriously impressive knitted pieces that recalled a Hans Bellmer poupée, or one of Louise Bourgeois’s hanging bodies. (If Hasbany’s designs look at all familiar, that might be because Erykah Badu wore one of her “booty suits” to Billboard’s Women in Music event earlier this year and promptly went viral; it turns out they were first connected as they both attended the same high school.)
Hasbany’s final look required its own separate entrance: a 12-foot tall dress crafted from huge, globular balloons that brought the house down with a surge of claps and cheers. After the announcement that she had won the top prize, another round of applause followed. At a moment when the fashion industry feels like it’s having an identity crisis—and the answer of many executives seems to be to place a higher premium than ever on the commercial over the creative—it was a joy to be somewhere where the only barrier for entry was a fearless sense of imagination.
