June 14, 2025 |
What do you wear to witness the future of fashion? If you’re me, something with pockets. Graduate Fashion Week 2025 has commenced at the Truman Brewery, and this year’s spectacle came swift and well… strange – kicked off by the University of Central Lancashire and Norwich University of the Arts in a double-bill of unruly invention.
UCLan dialled up the surrealism with a sheer red bodysuit and plunging blazer, like a corporate hallucination from a fever dream. At Norwich, tailoring turned mutant: a cobalt blue Frankenstein shirt with three collars (yes, three), two of which sprouted off oversized boxy shoulders like parasitic twins. Even ties sprouted their own turf-textured fuzz, as if freshly fertilised.
Elsewhere, India Farmer made her GFW debut with a collection that turned the runway into what felt like a wedding aisle – but not as we know it. Opening with a corseted satin LWD (that’s Little White Dress) layered with delicate crochet lace and finished with a billowing veil-turned-train. The familiar bridal codes – white satin, florals, something borrowed – were reimagined into her something new. One look blew up the garter into ruched, frilly mini shorts, a figure-cinching floral bustier and a shoulder-skimming bib.
The most unhinged material in her collection? “Dried flowers from my ex – I kept them for two years just for this,” Farmer said backstage on her finale a blooming crinoline mini.
A rainbow-clad statement came from May Gauntlett, whose adaptive fashion collection rebranded visual signifiers linked with disability – iconic symbols, mobility aids – into bold graphic statements. “Put Disability Back in Diversity,” her garments declared, stretched across electric knitwear or behind wheelchairs like capes. Silhouettes played with a childlike sensibility, supersizing stuffed toys into hoodies. “It’s hard to find adaptive fashion that feels young and exciting,” she told us. “If I’d had something like this growing up, I’d have worn it every day.”
Then came the digital detour at the CLO 3D hub where I animated a garment onto a personalised model, weight-calibrated a look according to material to simulate real-time movement and reshot it in an editorial-style shoot in front of a graffiti-clad wall – all before lunch. Turns out, the tool that first launched for film and gaming studios in 2009 now offers designers a full 360-degree scope to create. It’s a complete studio ecosystem and techy atelier – you can pattern cut, fit, shoot, animate and reanimate a garment without cutting a single toile of calico. The interface felt like Photoshop for design – with the added bonus that you can style a runway show on a tropical island if you want to.
UCA Epsom’s show offered a unified and elevated approach, with a strong emphasis on silhouette, detail and utilitarian finesse. These were grad debuts rich in vision and commercial practicality. One collection riffed on Simone Rocha romanticism with a navy, cream and peach parade of frill and strappy handwear. (Eli Ng, we’re looking at you.)
Elsewhere, a collection styled hair with suspended feathers in hues of rouge and ivory, à la Ann Demeulemeester, but it was Coffee Lum’s surrealist capsule that most resembled Daniel Roseberry’s Schiaparelli – both in spirit and in spectacle. His collection, titled Leave the Door Half Closed (ironic, for something I hope wedges his very stylish shoe fully through fashion’s front door), played with suiting tropes and sculptural optical illusion. The first of the three looks featured a skirt with a collar-shaped waistband, cinched by a floating tie-turned-belt and a fringed white baguette-ish bag suspended mid-air. The second starred a tilted black cap skewing the model’s face and played with proportion, and the third served us chrome detailing on a silver platter: flashy buckles styled like suspenders, fastened over a navy mini-skirt and overshirt-skirt.
Later, at Breaking Boundaries: Being a Gen Z Entrepreneur in Fashion, a panel talk led by student-founders, designers Flavia Nis, Estelle Henry of Irie Studio and Jaz Bhachu spoke candidly about building without backing, skill-stacking out of necessity and doing it all outside London. “You don’t just design… you’re a full production house,” Jaz said. “You illustrate, animate, direct and produce your lookbook. It’s a million careers in one.” Your assistant? CLO. Your moodboard? The group chat. Your studio? Wherever your laptop is.
The final grad show of the day belonged to Nottingham Trent, where experimental fixtures stood out – like a finale look repurposing football tees into a black jersey and skirt ensemble redesigned as a life-sized ball, featuring the classic pentagon pattern in coloured offcuts. Intarsia-knit suiting also dominated, but Maanyata Arora brought her work home, juxtaposing haute couture silhouettes with the heritage artistry of Kantha embroidery from West Bengal, India. “Each stitch tells a story of the skilled artisans whose delicate craft often goes unnoticed and uncelebrated,” she said of her collection which she called, Threads Layered in Luxury.
Whether through subverted tailoring, embroidered heritage or digitally native design processes, the next wave of designers have arrived fluent in contradiction, collaboration and autonomy. And day one of Graduate Fashion Week made it clear what today’s grads want. Not just a seat at the table, but to design new ones entirely.
Top image: photography courtesy of @officialgfw.
