Antigravity & Innovation at the London College of Fashion MA16 Exhibition
As the Fashion Week merry-go-round rolls into town again, the London College of Fashion has commandeered the cavernous basement of Bloomsbury’s Victoria House to showcase the work of its most recent cohort of MA graduates. Intriguingly dubbed Antigravity, from a curatorial perspective, the exhibition probes ‘the moment when an idea ignites … a point where the mind holds no logic’. Ranging amidst mannequins hanging in suspended animation, the visitor, confronted by the tangible, solidified realisation of just a few of these ideas, simultaneously serving to illustrate the ‘limbo’ in which the unrealised idea exists, is almost immediately greeted by their own realisation that this is no ordinary student fashion exhibition.
Taking in the work of graduates of such diverse specialisms as curation, media production and psychology, wandering past two female models grooming each others’ locks with the aid of foot-held combs before happening upon an enigmatically charming young man - sporting 10-inch platforms - breaking between furious bouts of Voguing, I was struck, on the exhibition’s opening night, by the college’s - and students’ - ever-more-apparent refusal to be bound by fashion’s accepted definitions. Whilst examples of innovative garment design abounded, many projects (MA Photography graduate Aimee Scott’s powerful short film, Woman, at first sight more socio-political broadcast than fashion film, is one such stand-out) seemingly paid little more than incidental regard to clothing. Is fashion itself becoming as impossible to pin down as the genesis of the ideas which drive it?
Whilst we tend to assume that fashion’s remit should be limited to that which has (a) an association with clothes, or, at least, personal appearance, and/or (b) a short shelf-life, the Oxford Dictionary defines it as ‘the style associated with a specified place or people’. LCF’s staff and students appear, quite rightly, to be reasserting fashion’s imperative to both comment on, and influence, the style with which a specified people (us) within a specified place (here) relate to themselves, each other and their environment, with concerns related to identity, gender, race, age, sustainability and the future (of both the fashion industry and society as a whole) writ large.
Happily, however, a great many students have chosen to utilise fabric - and sequins - in the service of higher concerns. If you find yourself suffering from Fashion Week fatigue this weekend, taking 45 minutes to curl up on a bean bag chair in the exhibition’s pop-up screening room whilst allowing MA Photography graduate Quentin Hubert’s Silver Goddesses to quash all notions of age-appropriate attire and Tian Chen’s mesmerising manipulation of imagery to inquire into the coupling of Reality and Virtual via the media of film - and beautiful clothing - comes highly recommended.
The LCF MA16 Exhibition runs until Saturday 20th February at Victoria House Basement, Southampton Row, London WC1B 4DA (12-7pm Thursday & Friday; 12-5pm Saturday). Entry is free.
Words: Samantha Simmonds
