1 Granary - By the Students of Central Saint Martins

26January2015

THE DUTCH DESIGNER SHARES HER THOUGHTS ON COMMUNICATING THE MOVEMENT OF 3D PRINTED GARMENTS THROUGH TECHNOLOGICAL CHANNELS, AND THE POTENTIAL OF MASS PRODUCTION FOR FASHION TECH.

As Couture Week started yesterday, we take a look at one of fashion’s most unexpected couture designers: Iris van Herpen, who continuously surprises the audience by mixing of 3D printing and intrinsic handcraft. We spoke with the Dutch designer about communicating movement through different technological channels like the Internet, and if we are nearing the point at which 3D printed clothes will become mass-produced and fully accessible.

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26January2015

THE DESIGNER REVEALS HOW 3D PRINTED GARMENTS ARE NOT AS IDENTICAL AS WE ALWAYS THOUGHT....

Fashion does go beyond the borders of London, Milan, Paris and New York. Israel’s Shenkar College of Design, for example, is ranked as number 15 on Fashionista’s list of best 50 fashion design schools in the world. The beauty of these not-so-conventional fashion cities, is that they don’t have any traditions they tend to stick to. Even in London we hold on to the tradition of breaking the rules and being ‘forward’. In turn, our newness has become a tradition.

Now, look at a country like Israel, where engineering and fashion design students are put together to do projects. Where Orthodox and Arabs both walk the streets. Where fashion and technology go hand in hand.

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25January2015

HOW MUCH OF THE FASHION AUDIENCE DO YOU WANT TO PLEASE? AND HOW MUCH DO YOU NOT WANT TO PLEASE THEM? - THE WESTMINSTER FASHION COURSE DIRECTOR TALKS SHOCK VALUE, GALLIANO AND THE THEATRICS OF FASHION SHOWS

Andrew Groves has done the bad boy boogie: from secretly printing a hundred Playboy t-shirts in CSM’s old print room to staging controversial fashion shows with theatrics as daring as McQueen’s (he was his right hand for a while). Does anybody remember SS99’s ‘cocaine nights’? Andrew has been the University of Westminster’s Fashion Course Director for the past 11 year, and is now ready to give us the Louise rant about young designers wanting to do MA’s or join conglomerates, and opens up about shock value, and getting an audience to ‘think’.

23January2015

THE DESIGNER, WHO IS SHORTLISTED FOR THE H&M DESIGN AWARD 2015, TALKS ABOUT TURNING 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 RUBIK CUBE POSSIBILITIES INTO A SINGLE COLLECTION

20’s jazz, hippies and hip-hop are a seemingly random list. No, you haven’t tuned into Greatest Hits Radio, nor is it a history of The Hit Parade. These are in fact a small sample of a detestable list of things that inspired Andrea Jiapei Li’s collection I AM WHAT [I AM]. But as inquisitive in nature she may be, she “doesn’t have anything to ask a fortune teller” for her designs are the making of all answers. So for those seeking truth through design, look no further as we discover that Andrea has the Midas touch and can answer the unquestionable with needle and thread.

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23January2015

HOW VALID IS YOUR STUFF IF PEOPLE ARE NOT ACTUALLY WEARING IT?

Tracey Nicholson is on the phone. She’s in green Belfast, I’m in grey London. We talk about controversy (‘using a model who’s not a size six still seems to be incredibly shocking to some people’), PR agencies’ iron fist of image control and producing valid work in our ‘like culture’.

Tracey studied Art & Design at Central Saint Martins (a course which has now morphed into something else), which appealed to her because of its collaborative aspects — working together with people from different pathways. Upon graduation, she emailed stylists and their agencies to look for work. Even though she didn’t have a lot of experience she was hired as Alister Mackie’s second assistant, who was AnOther Man’s fashion director at the time. She stayed for one and a half year, then started working with Tabitha Simmons in New York. “Tabitha shot for AnOther and did a lot of their covers, but then she also worked a lot for Dolce&Gabbana, and American Vogue. I had worked for smaller, independent magazines, and then to go to American Vogue, was another big learning curve, because it was this huge institution with market editors and lots of different people who specialised in a small field.”

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22January2015

THE PARSONS GRADUATE AND HER CREATIVE PARTNER PAUL JUNG ON PARTNERSHIP, POTENTIAL, OBSESSION AND GOING VIRAL

Melitta Baumeister gets it. She gets that young (creative) designers need to thrive in New York. She gets that you can’t just rely on making ‘clothes’, because we live in The Age of Tumblr. She gets that offbeat thinking, and hard work, will get you places. She gets it, together with her creative partner Paul Jung.

We strike up a conversation over coffee in London’s Dover Street Market, the store that’s given Melitta a chance to sell worldwide.They’re already sitting at a table near the window, when I walk into the top floor’s cafe. It’s a rainy day (what’s new, London?). They’re wearing clean shapes, black and white: clothes from Melitta’s own line. I sit down, we chit chat, and order coffee. What do we talk about? Crap post-graduate support systems in New York, for starters.

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22January2015

TO CELEBRATE THE FIRST MARGIELA COLLECTION BY JOHN GALLIANO, FRIDA WANNERBERGER ILLUSTRATED THE COLLECTION - AND WE SHARE RARE INSIGHTS INTO THE LIFE OF THE MASTER, TAKEN FROM A FEATURE IN OUR FIRST ISSUE

John Galliano. It’s a strong, Gibraltarian name with the reverberating effect of a sun-sized gong, at least in terms of hyper-real talent, OTT flamboyance, and high-profile controversy. Yet despite living in the extreme ends of a very public spectrum, the prolific designer was (and is) a softer soul than his reputation lets on – a Catholic-turned-club kid stalwart of the fashion industry; the sweetest of provocateurs.

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21January2015

THE DESIGNER WHO SHOWED HIS FIRST COLLECTION AFTER CENTRAL SAINT MARTINS MA MENSWEAR, TALKS ABOUT SETTING UP HIS OWN BUSINESS, THE PRESSURE AND THE CREATIVE PROCESS.

During London Collections: Men, the support for recent Central Saint Martins graduates continued: just as Fashion East took on Grace Wales Bonner directly after her BA collection, so did their initiative ‘MAN’, with CSM’s MA menswear graduate Rory Parnell-Mooney. For his first season after graduating, he showed alongside Nicomede Talavera and Liam Hodges, and continued to explore his past collection’s point of view, but with a new outlook. Boys walked the runway with slick hair, wearing floating black- and navy garments, to the sound of Nirvana’s ‘Breed’.