Last night, fashion editors and famous children had months-old cigarette butts lobbed at their heads. It was part of Evilkebab’s graduate showcase at Central Saint Martins, where the aspirant designer hobbled through the audience like an extra in Les Mis, shouting “bend over fag” to a sea of iPhones. The whole thing smelt awful – and it also pissed off fashion critic Sarah Mower and Liz Hurley’s son Damien – which is, presumably, what the designer had intended. It meant that Eden Tan’s prize-winning collection – which saw kilts, hoodies and baptismal dresses attached to mammoth bolts of fabric – felt all the more light, expansive, and benevolent. “I feel pretty amazing,” he told us backstage. “It’s crazy to think I’d be here when I started the course. The collection is about making clothes that can be reprocessed into new clothes. None of these garments have off-cuts. As the role came, it stayed.”
Of the 134 collections, models walked with pianos, chairs, taxidermied birds and enormous papier-mâché puppets attached to their bodies. Lace slips were embedded in neon shop signs, reflective orbs swung from pleated skirts, and pool floats were worn as panniers. It was – as always – weird and accomplished and artful, with the class of 2023’s message laid bare in forthright slogans: “hot and toxic”, “CSM made me skinny”, “fear the working class”, and “you can’t afford it”. Particular highlights included a haphazard and vibration-raising collection from Sarabande scholar Carson Lovett, a primordial tribute to Rick Owens via Cathy Meyong, and Ivan Delogu’s new-age villagers in their extreme babushka gowns. Click through the gallery above to see the rest of the collections from Central Saint Martins’ 2023 BA showcase, and revisit the MA collections here.
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