As he joins the Zoom call from the choppy Eduroam WiFi of Central Saint Martins, Kai Ghattaura – the 23-year-old designer from Telford – is in the final stages of completing his MA collection. Seminomadic was debuted last night (February 19) at London Fashion Week, following a year of momentum sparked by his last project, A Scattered Dream, a rave-turned-fashion show staged in a shaky North London industrial venue.

“I’m not interested in dragging out the same kind of aesthetic across seasons,” he tells me, leaning back into the study cove he’s calling from. “My references are always trying to juxtapose what is happening on the internet right now with old historical references that inherently make no sense together.”

Shown at CSM’s MA Fashion graduate show, Seminomadic saw Ghattaura’s models take to the runway in upturned pike shoes and colourful jackets, with an added focus on headwear and fastenings. Fabric was banded around arms, while long trails of balled textile wrapped around chests and headpieces, some trailing all the way to the floor.

This anachronistic play runs throughout the designer’s previous work, which married medieval-fantasy silhouettes with hyper-online detritus. Soundtracked by a dark, heady backbeat, models stormed the space in distressed, mud-smeared garments, swords and gauntlets in hand – their medieval grime punctuated by flashes of digital absurdity: a “bubonic plague”-flavoured Lost Mary backpack, a Gen Alpha–primed cap reading “Gyatt Aura”, and a cry-laughing emoji handbag cast in concrete.

But for all its algorithmic-coolness, there’s a grounding in Ghattaura’s work that is easy to miss, especially if caught through blown-out clips online and blurry Instagram stories from the scene’s 20-somethings. “It’s really important that my work is not just some kind of fantasy land escape from reality, but actually it’s like a reflection of what is happening around us, which most of the time isn't that good,” he tells us. 

Below, we talk to the designer about the “broken” fashion industry, meme culture and what it was like dressing Liverpudlian-of-the-moment Esdeekid.

What are some influences within your work?

Kai Ghattaura: I grew up heavily on the computer, so that obviously influences my work a lot. I wasn’t one of those kids drawing at six; I was playing games. I think that really shaped how I think and what I find interesting. I never really got into exhibitions or fashion shows because they just seemed really boring to me.

Do you still play any videogames?

Kai Ghattaura: When I was 18 and moved to London. I left everything back home, so I was kind of forced to go out and socialise. Before that, I used to play a ton of games like Minecraft, Kingdom Hearts, and Final Fantasy.

What was it like dressing Esdeekid in a custom pieces for his tour?

Kai Ghattaura: It was chill. He reached out ages ago after seeing my BA collection. We’d wanted to work together for a while, but the timing never lined up. He was even meant to walk the show, but it clashed with his tour. Since then, he’s blown up, and I got contacted by his stylist, Alex, who asked for a few pieces. Two of them have already been shown, the swords and hoodie, and there’s another piece we worked on for this year, which I’m really excited about, but I can’t talk about it yet.

How did you get into fashion?

Kai Ghattaura: When I was 16, I had no idea what I wanted to do, but my mum knew I liked clothes, so she signed me up for an art course at my local college in Shrewsbury. It covered pattern cutting, but also photography, art, and illustration. I didn’t even know you could study fashion at the time. As soon as I learned pattern cutting, I was hooked, and I just bummed off the rest. From there, for whatever reason, I ended up on the BA at CSM.

What are you working on right now?

Kai Ghattaura: I’m working on my MA collection and starting to plan my show. For me, it’s really important that the audience is involved, not just a spectator. That’s why the rave setting made sense for A Scattered Dream, but I’d love to keep experimenting with unconventional spaces and trying new things.

What do you want people to know about your practice?

Kai Ghattaura: The most important thing is having fun in your practice. When I was putting on that show on basically no budget, one of the main things I had in mind was that it would be a fun experience for the team. No one was sent out to pick up fabric or run errands; everything was prepared beforehand, and most of the patterns were done by me.

We had this massive room full of all sorts of items, and the team had as much freedom to create as I did. It was very collaborative. One week, an intern might bring in some old chairs, the next week another cuts them up, and by the third week someone’s turned them into a pair of wings. Everyone’s drinking beers, smoking, experimenting, it’s meant to be fun, a sort of crash course on how to struggle a show together. And yeah, I’m really happy with how it turned out.

You’ve said the fashion system is broken. Why?

Kai Ghattaura: I think the whole system is completely broken right now, there’s nothing interesting happening, and I don’t even want to go to most shows. Nothing transgressive has happened in the last decade, and no one’s been pushed out of their comfort zone.

I hate special treatment. No one is more important than anyone else. That’s how I run my team too – we all work together, I'm on the sewing machine 24/7, if I wasn't doing emails, everyone is contributing. That’s how you make something amazing.

Which fictional character do you relate to most?

Kai Ghattaura:  Rudo from Gachiakuta because he loves trash. 

If the fashion industry disappeared tomorrow, what would you retrain as?

Kai Ghattaura: I’d probably get a pub job; fashion is so stressful. I'd like to just chill out and play some games.

Scroll through the gallery above for Ghattaura’s entire graduate collection