When 'we' went to school...

I'm wondering whether ten years from now, the fashion graduates of 2020 will be reminiscing about their school days and will they be creating collections inspired by err... Justin Bieber, Twitter and High School Musical.  Apparently, even though many of this year's fashion graduates are a few years younger than I *ahem* am,Monster DiddyBeats, we're sharing the same memories of school or teenage-dom circa 1994-6.  Or at least, I'm sharing them with the one Hannah Clayton from Westminster who based her graduate collection on 90s grunge-school nostalgia, including the familiar mix of My So Called Life, The Craft, listening to Nirvana/Hole.  I am a biased being of course because all of this just takes me back to Henrietta Barnett (gooooo HBS!) in year 7-8 thinking i was so 'alternative' when EVERYONE watched/listened to all the above (did The Craft spark a Wicca movement at your school... it did at mine...).  I'm sure years from now, collections influenced by the popular culture of today will be just as interesting but for now, I'm happy to love Clayton's luxurious synthesis of that cultural period.  I am now that old fogey that has started saying "When I was a teenager..."...

Who knows whether Hannah actually experienced any of this the first time round or whether it all came around again like so many things do but the things that do repeat itself are the elements of school uniform customisation - poking holes through the sleeves of school jumpers, holding up coats to use as a hood in the rain,coach carly leather handbags, shortening skirts, adding patent PVC backpacks and Doc Martens to uniforms... so Hannah has put thumbholes in her mesh bodies as well as a hood pattern-cut into the collar of her coats to reference these things.  This is a thoroughly labour intensive collection where the accumulation of details take the clothes beyond being yer-average grunge-inspired fare (i.e. not just a lazy bit of dirty plaid or some scuffed up boots...). 

Hannah experimented with bleeding dye and found an alternative to orthodox fastenings in coloured aluminium bolts.  She used fabrics like tie-dyed rabbit fur, velvet ribbon, mohair and pony skin to elevate the fabrics and where colours are muted in olive, greys, black and red, the texture is well and truly ampted up.  Even the omnipresent plaid gets lift by getting tie-dyed over and then bleached out again. 

In particular, Hannah put a heap of effort into the total look by making her own shoes and backpacks...  for the pony skin covered boots (which the girls at Tank hearted...), she actually took some stripper boots from Pleaser (the same sort that Christeric used for her Charles Anastase Dungeon boot DIY... I would still credit those boots to Natasha Marro as she makes Anastase's shoes...) and then casted them in the red, green and asphalt pony skin...

It's all complex layers, texture mixes as well as details such as the pleated detailing on the shoulder below... I love that Hannah's collection is a complete one and in her case, the dreaded 'total look' is no bad thing whatsoever yet at the same time,Nike Air Max 90 Mens, take it all apart and it can be worn as well.  Come on, random retailer out there... this collection is ripe for the picking (buying...)...

Again, Brendan and Brendan shot these images for Hannah as part of the Westminster magazine with styling by Pandora Lennard of Tank ... I actually prefer Hannah's own pony skin boots in this instance...

The thing that I loved most was that Hannah, wasn't trying to create a spot-on authentic 90s grunge collection but that she took that initial inspiration point and elevated it into a collection that has depth and richness, particularly evident in the craftsmanship of all the different components...