Key details
Date
- 29 May 2019
Read time
- 3 minutes
The Royal College of Art (RCA) will this year present its annual MA Fashion show – All At Once – an immersive event, followed the next day by a showroom made up of talks, walks and performances that investigate fashion as designed identities. The show is being held at the Cork Street Galleries, Mayfair, London 7–8 June, 2019.
Key details
Date
- 29 May 2019
Read time
- 3 minutes
Press Event: Friday 7 June
All at Once show (invite only): Friday 7 June, timed slots available
All at Once showroom (all welcome): Saturday 8 June, times 11.00– 17.00
Location: Cork Street Galleries, Mayfair, London, W1S 3NG
All At Once will take the form of a large-scale, dynamic installation that will combine structural interventions, a diverse ensemble of 50 models; a spectral chess. This will form a live tableaux that demonstrates innovation in fashion from the RCA 2019. Meanwhile in the subterranean galleries, visitors discover the RCA MA Fashion 2019 ‘server’, a spellbinding environment where individual designers demonstrate their thinking through film and image; the server that forms the avatars above.
And as a national climate emergency has been declared by the UK Parliament, All at Once, asks urgent questions that address the fashion industry’s impact on people and the planet. Students focus on creating new, wholly sustainable, materials based on bio-technology, found objects and gentle handmade pieces made using ancient craft techniques; equally looking to investigate the digital software that can ease our use, re-examine identity and form neo-design areas, systems and apparel,
Zowie Broach, Head of Fashion, RCA said:
‘The RCA MA Fashion 2019 cohort are the new wave of designers – they are deeply precise and precious about what they put into the world. They ask questions about gender, form and culture – in both the real world and digital. It’s a rallying cry against spiraling into a vortex of the disposable and counteracts rigid seasonal cycles in fashion.’
All at Once brings together the work of over 50 students across MA Fashion Womenswear, Menswear, Knitwear, Footwear, Accessories & Millinery. Snapshot highlights include:
Laura Kraup Frandsen (MA Fashion Womenswear) will present no physical collection, but a protest: proposal, debate, and a passionate cry for climate crisis. As a member of Extinction Rebellion she confronted ideas of overconsumption and concluded that to be part of change she needed to take action against it, rather than add to it, or try to sell it.
Lucy Barlow (MA Footwear, Accessories & Millinery) creates tall, proud hats that today double as life-jackets and pillows inspired by the Jamaican dancehalls of the late 1970s. Lucy worked under the couture milliner Jean Barthet in the eighties, where she created hats for Claude Montana and YSL. This interweaves a powerful archival history into her process.
Clara Chu (MA Footwear, Accessories & Millinery) is eager to transform the everyday object commonly known as Tupperware. Living in the world of mass-consumption and production, she has turned homeware appliances and kitchenware such as ice-cube trays, cupcake moulds and rubber jar openers into a humorous collection of accessories such as belts and handbags. The contrast of the hand-craft with mass-production creates something that is oddly beautiful, highly desirable and often edible!
Ben Osborn (MA Fashion Menswear) uses fragility and a sensitivity of touch with inspiration from Modernist architecture to create a broader language around masculinity. The collection includes hand-made fastenings created in collaboration with Bronte Schwier (MA Jewellery & Metal).
Karoline Vitto (MA Fashion Womenswear) celebrates the fleshy parts of the female body that women are normally encouraged to hide. Her starting point was a Brazilian waist-clincher that she used to investigate how the body can be re-framed in different ways by accentuating or moving the flesh.
Piero D’Angelo (MA Fashion Womenswear) uses biotechnology – a living organism called a slime mould – to explore how the human body could evolve in the future.
Timothée Glieze (MA Fashion Womenswear) is working in a new era of digital design. Inspired by a mix of his own heritage, he combines the use of contemporary and traditional fabrics in his design process.
ENDS
For further information or images please contact the RCA Press Office [email protected]
Notes to Editors
About the RCA
The Royal College of Art, the internationally renowned art and design university, provides students with unrivalled opportunities to deliver art and design projects that transform the world.
A small, specialist and research-intensive postgraduate university based in the heart of London, the RCA is a high performing institution, a radical traditionalist in a fast paced world.
The RCA's approach is founded on the premise that art, design creative thinking, science, engineering and technology must all collaborate to solve today's global challenges.
The University employs around 1000 professionals from around the world – professors, researchers, art and design practitioners, advisers and visiting lecturers – to teach and develop students in 30 academic programmes.
RCA students are exposed to new knowledge in a way that encourages them to experiment. Working across scientific and technical canvases and beyond set boundaries, RCA students seek to solve real-world problems.
The RCA runs joint courses with Imperial College London and the Victoria & Albert Museum. InnovationRCA, the university's centre for enterprise, entrepreneurship, incubation and business support, has helped over 50 RCA business ideas become a reality that has led to the creation of over 600 UK jobs.
The RCA recently launched GenerationRCA which will propel the University’s radical new academic vision by focusing on three key pillars: ‘Place, Projects and People’. This programme will see the RCA transform its campuses and the ways in which the university teaches, researches and creates. It includes the construction of the Herzog & de Meuron-design flagship building in Battersea and introduction of future programmes centres on nano and soft robotics, computer science and machine learning, materials science and the circular economy.
Alumni include David Adjaye, Christopher Bailey, David Hockney, Tracey Emin, Thomas Heatherwick, Lubaina Himid, Clare Waight Keller and Rose Wylie.