steventai SS17

The steventai presentation is always a curiosity. Staged at the Elms Lesters Painting Rooms, previous sets have included a bright and colourful, bunting-adorned classroom for SS16, followed by a 1940s living room - complete with vintage floral wallpaper and a cross-stitching nanny - for the subsequent AW16 showcase. All the while, the bespectacled young models epitomise Canadian designer Steven Tai's take on the awkward, nerdy girl.

To showcase the new SS17 collection, the presentation space was transformed into an artificial garden brushed with Gypsophila, and the models perched playfully on wooden swings. At a glance, the collection feels light, airy, and modestly elegant - in an Edwardian "Sunday Best" sort of fashion, albeit remaining fairly contemporary. The muted colour palette of white, greys and dusky blue draws our attention to details in the texture and fabric, from pleats and pussycat bows to ruffles and roughened hems.

ROBERTS | WOOD SS17

 

Katie Roberts-Wood, award-winning graduate of the Royal College of Art, presented the debut collection of her ROBERTS | WOOD womenswear label in September 2015, after winning the Fashion Scout Merit Award. In the remarkably small space of a year, Katie has become one of London's most exciting young designers, with her label stocked internationally by the likes of Club 21 and Dover Street Market.

The SS17 collection, presented this season at the BFC Show Space, maintains the delicate structures and ethereal aesthetic that is characteristic of the ROBERTS | WOOD brand. Ruffles and frills of prodigious scale are a predominant feature across the collection, bursting from translucent ensembles of white, navy and peach. Alongside these, dresses of characoal grey fabric are tied with oversized ribbons of the same material to create striking silhouettes. The overall look touches on the avant-garde, yet it remains soft and feminine.

Arts University Bournemouth, Graduate Fashion Week

While studying at Bournemouth University, I inevitably developed an intrigue for the creative goings-on at our next door neighbour, the Arts University Bournemouth. Even after graduating with my journalism degree, I had contemplated following my interest for fashion in a more hands-on capacity than simply this blog, for which the BA (Hons) Fashion Design course at AUB would have been my first option. Perhaps if I had taken that path, I might have designed the cat-print shirts for which I have been so longing.

Thankfully, those who did actually study Fashion Design at AUB know how to produce exciting clothes beyond my not-so-subtle obsession for feline kind. Among the final-year collections presented at Graduate Fashion Week were Aimee Willsher's marriage of science fiction and cabin crew uniform, Holly Marie Anderson's tropical beachwear, and Kelsea Lea's paratrooper themed menswear. Also featured were three childrenswear collections by Sophia Brecon-Smith, Elizabeth Layte and Catherine Thompson.

Further to producing a host of design talent, Arts University Bournemouth are a frontrunner in challenging the fashion industry's overarching yet outdated ideals towards beauty and body image. The university are supported by fashion commentator Caryn Franklin MBE, whose All Walks Behind The Catwalk initative seeks greater diversity of race, age, size and body shape in fashion imagery. Accordingly, the AUB fashion show employed a variety of models to represent the true breadth of UK consumers.