Of the 50-odd designers included in the show (pieces kept being added as they arrived in the post) three are from graduate collections Linde decided were too important not to display: Antwerp’s Hideki Seo and Andrea Ayala Closa and Central Saint Martins’ Annalisa Dunn. “Graduate collections are a unique fashion moment,” explains Linde. For years he has been following these particular schools (and the Netherlands’ ArtEZ) thanks to increased accessibility through the internet. Blogs such as Diane Pernet’s A Shaded View on Fashion have also been crucial to his education of fashion grads.
What makes the decade of the 2000s so hard to define, and this exhibition so interesting, is its adjacency to the time in which we are living. Unlike the 1970s or 1980s, it has not yet had the benefit of hindsight to blur out the stylistic details of the period leaving it exposed to be considered in a different light. What we are presented with is a period of time which is ultimately undefinable despite Linde’s best attempts. “These graduate collections revitalise projections of the period’s slippages and anachronism,” he informs. The addition of these graduate collections to the mix truly complicate any attempt at defining the decade, leaving it “overloaded and overworked.”