Yunus & Eliza
Sunday 19th September – Also on the Elle Talent LaunchPad were Yunus & Eliza, with an intriguing collection of jewellery and wearable sculpture. We asked Yunus about their background.
“We’re pretty new to it all, been going for about 18 months now,” he told us. “This is our first show. It’s been part-time for a long time and, just recently, full-time.
“We both come from a fine artist’s background so we were both involved in sculpture. I was a fine artist, doing painting, mainly, and illustration, and we kind of met by accident, really. I did an apprenticeship at Foundry, doing large bronze sculpture and restoration and Eliza came in with a small horse sculpture that she wanted cast in bronze. She didn’t know how expensive it was going to be so she was, like ‘Err, how about I get involved in the process and maybe cut the price a bit.’ I was happy to teach her and we started playing around with some ideas.
Laura Theiss
Sunday 19th September – We first saw Laura Theiss at Alternative Fashion Week back in April. At London Fashion Week, she was exhibiting at the On|Off exhibition.
Laura was born and grew up in Lithuania. “I’ve been knitting since I was five years old. I studied business and that helps a lot in fashion. Then I studied Fashion Design at St Martins. I graduated in 2009.”
We asked her how this, her second collection differed from the one she showed at AFW. “This collection is a bit more sellable. I still try to keep my signature ethnic style but this time, I wanted to be more futuristic so I’ve used metallic, shiny elements. My inspiration comes from Chinese legends about aliens so it’s a combination of ethnic and futuristic.
“We designers, we’re like journalists – we take a story, we research and translate it to our collection so it’s like the clothes are telling the story. Crocheted ribbons and tassels but metallic, 80% cotton and the rest is metallic. Most of it is hand-knit, with only the finer pieces are factory-made to my patterns.”
We asked what the reaction has been to the new collection. “Surprisingly amazing. As a designer, you never know, you get paranoid shortly before the show about what people are going to say, what the press are going to say but I’m really happy. There’s a been a really good reaction. People like to see traditional knitwear made in new ways.”
Laura’s collection is targeted at 18-25 year old girls and is priced in the £300-700 range. It’s currently sold at Beyond the Valley in London and Debut in New York, and you can see the full collection at lauratheiss.com
Eudon Choi
Sunday 19th September – Eudon Choi is hot property this season, having won the Vauxhall Fashion Scout Merit Award and been chosen for the Elle Talent LaunchPad. We asked him how he’d got here.
“I was a menswear designer initially, working at a very high-end design company in Korea. I decided to come to London purely because there are two very good Masters courses here, at the Royal College of Art and Central St. Martins. I got accepted to the Royal College of Art so that’s where I studied. I then worked as a senior designer at All Saints and Twenty8Twelve, and then I thought ‘I’ll just do my own thing’. So, I started my label and this is my third season. Last season I got chosen for Ones to Watch by Vauxhall Fashion Scout and I secured six very good stockists, and then I won these two awards, which is fantastic!”
Catching up with Charlotte Taylor
Sunday 19th September – Last time we spoke to Charlotte, she was planning a trip to Costa Rica so we asked her how it went.
“It got cancelled because of the volcanic ash disruption,” she told us. “So I went to Ibiza instead. But I’m still planning to go to Costa Rica in November.”
However, it seems that she’s had plenty to keep her busy since launching her label at VFS back in February. Her debut collection is being stocked by two online retailers. “One of them was through VFS – that was Young British Designers – and the other one is Coggles,” Charlotte told us. “It was really nice to start off with a couple and just find my feet, deal with the production, get all that sorted. I spent a lot of time going around to different factories. It was really important to me that I got on with the people. Everything’s getting made in East London in a little family-run factory. It’s quite important to me [to manufacture locally] because my stuff’s quite strongly associated with bring really British. It wouldn’t be as good if I went and got it made somewhere else at this stage. Also, it’s good to be able to monitor it – if something goes wrong, I don’t have to fly to Istanbul to change it.”
VFS Exhibition: Nancy Van Ostren, Yasmin Kianfar & Sini Moilanen
Tuesday, 21st September – At HNT, we generally avoid making value judgments but we have to confess that we love the Vauxhall Fashion Scout exhibition. Freemasons Hall is a terrific venue and there’s a real sense of bubbly optimism from the designers showing their work.
VFS Ones to Watch: A.Hallucination
Friday 17th September – Hwan Sun Park and Chung Chung Lee are two young Korean designers who graduated from Central St Martins in 2008 and combined their talents to create menswear brand, A.Hallucination. “A stands for ‘auditory’, which is the same meaning as my name,” Chung explained. “And ‘hallucination’ is the same meaning as Hwan, in Korean. We’re saying to our customer, we want you to hear our voice, this is our theme.”
Between them, the pair have experience working at top brands like Tom Ford, Burberry and Ozwald Boateng. This is their second collection, having debuted the brand last year with a presentation last season at the Korean Cultural Centre in Trafalgar Square.
“The theme is ‘Airplane’. We got the inspiration from how we used to imagine that you could travel the whole world in an airplane when we were children,” Chung explained. “We didn’t want to use vivid colours. We like this kind of colour palette, with neutral colours between brown and green, and it ties in with the hallucination concept.”
See below for full coverage of A.Hallucination’s catwalk show.
London Fashion Week: PPQ S/S 2011
Friday 17th September – PPQ started out as a fashion/art collective in the early 90s. In 2000, Amy Molyneaux joined, fresh out of the fashion course at Central Lancashire University and partnered with Percy Parker to launch the first PPQ fashion collection. Today, PPQ is a successful fashion brand and a poster child for all young, aspiring British designers. They launched their S/S 2011 collection in the main catwalk space at Somerset House during London Fashion Week.
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VFS Ones to Watch: LiLee
Friday 17th September – Korean-born designer LiLee came to London to study at the London College of Fashion. She graduated with an MA in Fashion Design Technology earlier this year and her press show with LCF drew the attention of ASOS, who signed her to adapt that collection to create a diffusion line, which will be on sale in October. Success had continued with her selection as one of Vauxhall Fashion Scout’s Ones to Watch, where she presented a distinctive collection.
“The inspiration comes from a lady, walking with her dog in the 1930s,” LiLee explained. “I wanted to express a sporty look but keeping the elegance and femininity.”
See full coverage of her Ones to Watch catwalk show below.
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VFS: Krizia Robustella
Friday 17th September – Spanish designer Krisia Robustella made her London Fashion Week debut with a Baywatch-themed show and a collection entitled Beautiful Beach.
VFS Ones to Watch: Georgia Hardinge
Friday 17th September – Georgia Hardinge‘s collection during the Ones to Watch show at Vauxhall Fashion Scout.
