Central Saint Martins MA
Anything goes in the limitless creative cauldron that is Central Saint Martins. This is the London art and fashion school where pastel foam coats (Kenji Kawasumi), bowling balls as accessories (Timur Kim) and lifesize houses (Craig Green) are testaments to course director Louise Wilson and her keen eye that’s both feared and revered. During London Fashion Week, the MA class of 2012 unveiled collections so left-field you had no chance of getting inside their abstract heads, but you can’t help but try.
Opener Luke Brooks’ melancholic nomads carried the weight of the world in fishnets, paint-splattered monk dresses and headpieces that said “why” and “god.” Tweed whizz Hellen Van Rees used the textile to emboss a mosaic of cubes that protruded from matching drop-waist dresses. But it was burgeoning womenswear talent and fine artist Yong Kyun Shin whose subversive vision shone through the most. In a collection inspired by bookbinding, his technically sculpted springs were enough to arouse and astound.
“We took them on a journey. Some didn’t know where they were going, some did, but they got there in the end,” said Louis Wilson, before adding, “Some drove past the destination.”