agywag

Soaking Time is a collection born out of my love for the past. Inspired
by The Bloomsbury Set and their unconventional lifestyles, the post-war
austerity rejecting Teddy Girls and the radical New Romantics in the
1980s. I have picked at parts of 20th Century Britain; extracting the
anti-fashion and androgyny, steeping them together and attempting to
create a new concept. The idea has developed into a multi-piece,
interchangeable ‘capsule’ collection that is unassigned to a gender and
is made for an androgynous silhouette. The individual women that have
become my muses wore clothes for practical purposes, clothes that made
societal statements and clothes that didn’t define them purely as
women. Virginia Woolf held up her stockings with safety pins, Dora
Carrington pioneered a pageboy haircut and my Auntie Jenny lived in
Levi 501s. Layering garments is an important part of my aesthetic as a
designer as well as a mixture of texture and tone. This lends my
designs to often have a wearable feel which I prefer to a haute-couture
image. When designing this final collection I wanted to retain a strong
nod to the past without replicating garments from the time exactly. I
think by combining styles of clothes from various eras as well as the
addition of textile techniques (hand painted organza and digitally
printed images) it sheds a new light on traditional approaches. I was
fortunate enough to be sponsored for my FMP by a brand I really admire,
Merchant and Mills. They bring style and purpose to sewing and source
incredible, natural fabrics alongside perfectly designed, functional
tools and notions. I believe my identity as a designer is a good match
for their brand and using their linen, dry oilskin and denim throughout
the collection has been a pleasure. I was familiar with them through my
work as a junior designer at Calm Amongst the Chaos, an independent
lifestyle clothing brand that designs and makes in England. I intend to
continue my position after I finish my degree and look forward to
being fully immersed in an exciting, new fashion house.