New graduates celebrate the platinum years
Professor Margaret Buck, the outgoing head of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, has the words for the period she has overseen. “They have been platinum years,” Buck said as her final students graduated last week and she described how, over 15 years, she turned a “failing school” into an international icon of educational excellence, now styled “University of the Arts.”
Those words were printed on the runway backdrop at last week’s BA fashion show, part of a roster of runway presentations by British art schools.
Another group marked a magical 15-year span, as Graduate Fashion Week, sponsored by British fashion chain River Island, held back-to-back shows in Battersea Park, South London. Christopher Bailey, creative director of Burberry and an alumnus of both Westminster College and the Royal College of Art, said of judging the students: “The talent was extraordinary. Everybody had a point of view and the students were so articulate; it was really refreshing.”
Like Nathan Jenden, creative director at Diane von Furstenberg, at the Royal College of Art gala, Bailey was looking at the students with the benevolent eye of a former graduate, and was also scouting for talent.
The shows offered an enormous range, from exceptional knitwear in intricate spiders’ webs of stitches to menswear that was creative in cut and proportions. Masculine fashion dominated the shows with all three award winners at Graduate Fashion Week focusing on men, from high-rise tailored pants to sportswear with a dark undercurrent.
Buck is proud that Central Saint Martins alumni are now in strategic positions in the world’s fashion houses, from John Galliano at Dior, through designers at Chloé, Givenchy “and now Pucci” (with Matthew Williamson’s appointment). Buck, the first woman head of a British art establishment, is leaving bathed in laurels - although she has been discreet about her impending departure and plans to continue her career as a consultant. Already she has helped to found in Shanghai the first fashion school on the Western model and now expects to use her expertise in the United Arab Emirates.
Yet Buck, along with several other student supporters, feels that this is the end of the 15-year “platinum” period, that included 1990s takeovers, brand- building and expansion.
“When you look back through history, everything goes in waves - art, poetry, comedy,” Buck says. But Jeff Banks, co- chair of Graduate Fashion Week, expresses concerns, shared by many staff members, that the enthusiasm of Tony Blair’s government for higher education is now producing too many students for tutors to handle in depth.
Buck says that rather than just expanding the student numbers, in her tenure, Saint Martin’s has “added to pathways” in fashion, such as accessories and history theory classes, broadening the portfolio so that students can “find a niche.” (Thirty percent come from overseas, especially Japan.)
The manner of teaching, designed to draw from a well of personal creativity, was summed up by Francesca Versace, niece of the late Gianni and his sister Donatella. Graduating from Saint Martins, Versace explained that her collection of “adorable” pink and sunshine yellow outfits came from exploring her childhood memories of the sensual statue-filled garden of Gianni Versace’s Lake Como mansion.
For Buck, all the disciplines - including the acting and directing programs that she added - are taught in the same spirit.
“I think the ethos of teaching has changed - it is more focused on methodology,” she says. “We don’t have a didactic approach. It is about finding your own interests and own identity. But there is a new onus on students. There is technology. And it is not enough to know about fashion on its own. You have to know the context in which it operates.”
In that spirit, Buck set up an “innovation” center with a think tank and consultants so that students can explore visions of the future, like an “emotional” wardrobe, “smart” textiles and design against potential crime - all aimed at “adding to the body of knowledge.”
What does that mean in terms of student fashion? Stand-out shows, such as the angular tailoring and plasticized finishes from Tatiana Simonian, set against an architectural projection, looked like they had been born on a computer screen.
At Graduate Fashion week, a Zandra Rhodes award showcased the colorful work of textile students. At the RCA, Nina Jensen-Collman showed fine- striped and graph-squared knits, while Aitor Throup showed a well-judged menswear collection, inspired by the idea of “when football hooligans become Hindu gods.”
Buck sums up the aerobic stretch that is the essence of the British teaching system.
“It’s about anticipating the future, looking for things we don’t yet need, about making the most of everyone’s potential,” she says. “And about how technology might effect our emotion connecting creativity.”
Rifat Ozbek, trained at Saint Martin’s, last week received “La Kore - Oscar della Moda 1966″ as the best foreign designer for an Italian brand.
Shanghai Tang, founded in 1994 as a modern Chinese brand, is going back to its roots by sponsoring a show of the first 10 graduates it has mentored in the newly founded fashion design division at CAFA, Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts.(via techwear < IHT)
