The international class of designers pulled from family memories, folkloric sources, history books and their internet browsing history to carefully construct a personal philosophy of craft – an emphatic part of the course’s pedagogy. Many of them were rooted in a specific time, place or memory: from an oasis in the Gobi desert, to Milan’s machismo; a Belle Époque cabaret to a Filipino wedding in Camden Town. Playful reimaginings of archetypal characters also peppered the show, from Holly Laidler’s dieselpunk “hotsy totsy” girls to Azeika Nelson’s vintage English football fans, or Siena Seung-Eun Cho’s avant-garde office workers with half-shredded shirting, and KJ Tantivachyanon’s heavily-ornamented hikers.
The cohort also possess an energising sense of aesthetic resourcefulness: Rebecca Halpenny, Kate Bigwood and Lily Rose Murphy fashioned natural wicker, silver candlesticks and sailor’s rope respectively into accessories or garments. Many of the designers expressed a whimsy or wantonness in their manipulation of familiar methods, as experiments with felted, shredded, scrunched and embellished fabrics rippled throughout the collections. The influence of their cultural intake from the last few years in London was tangible, with references to exhibitions on Medieval Women at the British Library or Hilma af Klint at the Tate, and resonances with beloved London labels like KNWLS and Chopova Lowena. These references to art and design were accompanied by a dedication to reviving and developing traditional hand-crafts and to repurposing existing fabrics, like a 1980s sail or antique military uniforms.
The designers walked out at the end to the tune of David Bowie’s ‘Heroes’, only confirming the confidence rippling through the collections: perhaps they don’t have all the answers to the existential, moral questions of our age, but the class of 2025 know who they are and where they want to be. Get to know the graduates and their work below.
