Through a Bram Stoker-esque hazy darkness, set to a soundtrack of FKA Twigs and Phillip Glass, Art School designers Eden Loweth and Tom Barratt presented their emotive collection. For AW20, the show was titled Fearless Love, and appeared emblazoned in strong red lettering over a picture of Maggie Hambling’s 2001 work Henrietta Eating a Meringue on the poster-format invite. The artist, most well known for her sculptural scallop monument to composer Benjamin Brittian on Aldeburgh Beach in Suffolk, had also collaborated with the duo on designing several sculptural black layered pieces, made in a material taken from previous collections.
Amongst the distressed tailoring, decadent ball gowns and embellished eveningwear that Art School has become known for, were a series of artist smocks included in the almost monochromatic collection. And artist Richard Porter created wearable sculptures; organic forms that were bow-lined with rope around the wearer’s waist or hanging in layers from their neck. In one look, make-up artist Dominic Skinner wrote the brand’s name in the chest hair of the model with an effect that recalled the stringy seaweed that washes up on a beach. Walking barefoot, the models padded through a chalky material, leaving a progressive layering of footprints down the centre of the catwalk, like footprints in the sand.
