John Galliano graduated from Central Saint Martins in 1984, and eight years later Lee Alexander McQueen followed suit. Two of their collections from the mid- nineties, Galliano’s Princess Lucretia (spring/summer 94/95) and McQueen’s Highland Rape (autumn/winter 95/96) use women’s bodies as a medium beyond clothing. Both use historical narratives to emotional and aesthetic effect, andRead more

For many, the arrival of winter brings with it a longing for summer. The cold has a way of expunging memories of sweaty afternoons spent with a cold drink pressed to the forehead in a desperate attempt to cool down. In a playful confrontation of this sensorial paradox, Maison Martin Margiela’s Spring/Summer ’06 collection, shownRead more

When thinking about jewellery, as I often do, my mind wanders to the nineteenth century legends. Famous jewellers such as Cartier, Fabergé and Bvlgari all rose to prominence in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. As the decades passed, each of these jewellery houses consistently reimagined the classic designs synonymous with its reputation (the panthère, the eggRead more

Madeleine Vionnet transformed the way in which designers approached the female figure. Eschewing the restrictiveness and rigidity of the corset, she favoured free-flowing silhouettes which accentuated the natural curves of a woman’s body. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, she revolutionised the fashion industry through her use of the bias cut, a technique of cutting onRead more

Fashion Interpretations Symposium, Part III remedied Wednesday’s mid-week slump with a fascinatingly interdisciplinary approach to fashion — watercolours, mythological goddesses, and a ramshackle cowshed all featured. The evening’s speakers included author, artist, and publisher Leanne Shapton and Judith Clark, curator and exhibition-maker. To begin, Leanne Shapton gave us a sneak peak into her ongoing project investigating theRead more

At last night’s Fashion Interpretations Symposium we heard from three amazing speakers: Lisa Cohen, Associate Professor of English and of Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Wesleyan University in Connecticut; Olga Vainshtein, Senior Researcher at the Russian State University for the Humanities in Moscow; and Elizabeth Kutesko, Lecturer in Cultural Studies at Central Saint Martins inRead more

It is going to be an exciting week for fashion enthusiasts around the world! The Fashion Interpretations Symposium has officially begun and so also begins our daily recaps here of each night. Dr. Rebecca Arnold’s discussion on Man Ray’s images for February 1937 issue of Harper’s Bazaar kickstarted the event, emphasising how the artist manipulatedRead more

As a teenager growing up in London in the 2010s, it was a rite of passage to ask for hair straighteners for Christmas – at least it was for my group of friends from our Catholic all-girls school. I remember when I got my first pair of straighteners at about 14. I was overjoyed. IRead more