CSM BA 09

Apologies for the lack of posting this week but we've both been busy beavering away at our non-blogging lives. I managed to get out of work on time on Tuesday evening to make the graduate show of Central Saint Martins to marvel at the class of 2009's designs up close. As is seemingly expected of them, the latest crop of talent from CSM put on a BA show which demonstrated a pleasing range of talent and I was more than a little bit pleased by the menswear design talent on show and I hope this came across on my twitter updates. Forty students trooped out with their BA collections with eleven of these dedicated to menswear, the future certainly looks bright for some of these...

Neil Young opened the show which was a surprise because I thought the Canadian singer songwriter was in the middle of his record breaking tour so how he found the time to create this collection I'll never know (apologies but that little joke just had to be made, lolz). With menswear graduates generally relegated to playing bit parts in the Press shows it was great to see it take centre stage here and kick start the show. Young's cyborg-style set the bar quite high with it mix of lightweight fabrics and strong tailoring and as I sat back in my seat I knew that this was going to be a good show.

Kye's collection made much of the audience chuckle and even the models had fun whilst donning the playful designs. The collections was themed around physical features of the body with fun details. It played on proportion whilst drawing on a body-building aesthetic that transpired through the garment's details, pockets became pecs and depicted intestines.

Caroline Jarvis' pastel palette collection continued the jovial mood on the catwalk as one of the models reached inside of his bird box bum bag and picked out a biscuit which was duly passed down the runway in a game of pass the confectionary. The collection included a number of subtle details that the more I look at it the more I notice, for example one jumper had a spine woven in to the back.

I have to confess that my concentration wained a little during Mathew Grant's collection because it was so very hot in York Hall. As I looked through the images over on catwalking I was surprised by how much I missed during the show, I just don't fair too well in the heat!

Peir Wu created one of the most wearable collections and I can see his designs doing exceedingly well commercially...I would happily snap up pieces from this collection right away, the cobalt blue long shirt in particular.

Peter Bailey's collection all started with the idea of doing a resort collection for men. As the sun has begun to shine most of us our thinking about our next holiday and this graduate gave us his vision of what he'd like us to be wearing. The Club Tropicana prints were accentuated by a soundtrack of Kelly Marie...this was one cheesy Summer but then, cheesy Summers are the best sort. He wanted to do something with a free spirit, going on holiday and being glamorous and I think most of us what get on board with that.

No comments:

Post a Comment