Last week, in London’s Shoreditch, the Winchester School of Art held their annual BA Fashion and Textiles graduate show. The event was an opportunity to discover the next generation of fashion talent, highlighted by the WSA Fashion Awards. On the night, Danish designer Peter presented the WSA Fashion Textiles Award to Suzanna James and the WSA Fashion Direction Award to Odella Yue. James’ collection, ‘The Great Outdoorsman’ turned to the Shetland Isles and Guernsey for inspiration by examining the historic role of knitwear in the regions through a complex study of stitch styles. Whereas Yue took a leap into pop culture by melding inspiration from retro arcade games and Studio 54. The result is the ‘Galaxy Racer Cub’, a collection that cleverly combines unconventional colours and textures. We caught up with the prize winners to find out a bit more about their work.
Odella Yue, 21, WSA Fashion Direction Award Winner
Where are you from?
I’m originally from Henan, China, but came to England when I was 13. Growing up there was fun, such a big, colourful and developed city.
Why did you choose to study fashion?
I’ve always known I wanted to go into design, but fashion was never just a career choice, it’s my passion and a way of life.
Which designers do you admire?
Thierry Mugler and Gareth Pugh are my heroes. I’m inspired by their understanding that fashion is more than just decorative, that it can be an armour, capturing the fragilities of the human body. Both designers have really opened my eyes and inspired me to be bolder with my work.
What are some of the biggest lessons you have learnt during your degree?
To always finish everything early.
How did you decide upon your final collection and the direction you wanted to take it?
With the ‘Galaxy Racer Club’ my aim was to create a nostalgia bomb that was bold, playful and adventurous in spirit. My inspiration came from Studio 54 and the colourful arcade games of the ‘70s and ‘80s, and I felt the combination of the two made an interesting collision. Also, I’ve always been a big games fan – when I was a teenager my friends and I would sneak out of the house at night and go play games at the local arcade.
What's been the biggest challenge creating your work and preparing for the show?
I used 170 meters of binding in my collection, which was totally mad! Other challenges were working with waterproof satin, I also designed my own print, which was inspired by modern pop art and psychedelic art. I also learnt that you need to be very organised to put on a good show, there were a lot panic moments but the experience was amazing, there’s nothing like watching a model walk down the catwalk in your design.
What would you like to do in the future and what will you do now?
I’ll be starting my MA soon, but in the meantime I’m working on my website and starting up a brand with some friends, which is super exciting.
Suzanna James, 23, WSA Fashion Textiles Award Winner
Where are you from?
I moved around a lot growing up, I was born in Belgium and when moving back to the UK my family and I lived in Manchester, Shropshire and Bath before going back to our roots in Wales, settling in Llangadog, Carmarthenshire. It’s a tiny place, just mountains, fields and pubs, so growing up there was the quiet life. We had Wensleydale sheep which my mum kept for textiles – the arts have quite a large community presence there. This all had a major influence on my interest in the great outdoors, respect for the natural environment, interest in craftsmanship and design aesthetic.
Why did you choose to study fashion?
I have to make things with my hands. At school when I was very young, I’d be sad if I wasn’t allowed to paint, so from an early age it was always obvious that I would study something in the arts. When it comes to fashion specifically, I made clothes for myself during my teens and at school a friend of mine, a fellow textiles designer, and I were christened ‘The Original Brigade’. It’s been my plan since around the age of 15.
Which designers do you admire?
With fashion, the designers that I admire span far beyond my own aesthetic. Throughout the seasons I look out for Araks, Dries Van Noten, menswear by Carven, Junya Watanabe, White Mountaineering, Engineered Garments, Acne Studios and Jil Sander. Towards the end of my final collection, I discovered Martin Across’ recent work, ‘The Landscaper‘, which was very in keeping with my interests. I also found lifestyle brand Snow Peak and Welsh boutique brand ‘Toast’.
What are some of the biggest lessons you have learnt during your degree?
My creativity stems from living life on many levels and experiencing different atmospheres and cultures. So, I’ve had to learn how to balance my creative life whilst maintaining my relentless work ethic. Unfortunately sleep is a necessity (sometimes), which I find irritating! Aside from that, my determination to make an ethical and sustainable collection brought some big lessons with it. I learnt a great deal about the problems fashion brands encounter when keeping ethics and sustainability a priority.
How did you decide upon your final collection and the direction you wanted to take it?
I studied landscapes in the Shetland Isles and traditional stitches from these historical knitwear islands in previous projects earlier in my degree. Then, in my final year, I became fascinated by an unusual pattern from a lost district in Russia, known as ‘Unskijposad’. This fueled my interest in the geographical homes and stories behind knit stitches, either well known, such as Guernsey, Aran and Fairisle or lost such as the ‘Unskijposad’ pattern. All of these stitches are directly linked to fisherman jumpers, as these sweaters show the direct development of knitwear in one of its original purposes. This has had an impact on the links within my project to landscapes and the sea. And, I wanted to combine all of this research into a collection celebrating knitwear within place, and the landscapes and natural environments that it originates from.
Are there any techniques or experimentations you have developed in your collection?
I spent a long time creating a new technique that would be representative of in-the-round hand knit Guernsey/Gansey jumpers which feature horizontal cables. I wanted to re-create this technique for domestic machine knitting. I experimented with a variety of ways in which to re-create this, such as hand stitching, and post-knit embroidery, to ‘hook up’ techniques before settling on my final approach, which incorporated original hand knit cabling which is knitted into the fabric during manufacture. This worked really well when combined with different cables, colours and yarns, I was really pleased with the results.
Another technique that I used within my collection was the fusing of knitted and woven fabrics using needle felting. I wanted to seamlessly join the two types of fabric together whilst keeping to the organic and natural aesthetic of my work. I had the idea to use needle felting to attach panels of my knitted fabrics to woven fabrics quite early on in my project and it proved very successful both on a large scale and also for small details within garments.
What's been the biggest challenge creating your work and preparing for the show?
The combination of time constraints, finance and the strict ethical and sustainable guidelines I had devised for my collection was definitely the biggest challenge.
What would you like to do in the future and what will you do now?
I am currently being interviewed for the Texprint exhibition and mentoring programme, which will hopefully lead to a very exciting summer with potential for showing my work at industry events in Paris and Shanghai, this is a very busy time for me and I’ve been blown away by the positive response to my work. I‘m keeping an open mind to everything that comes my way.
Text by Nazanin Shahnavaz