Meet The Talented Young Designers On Sarah Mower’s #SarahsList

Richard Quinn 2

Sarah Mower knows talent. As Chief Critic for American Vogue and stalwart supporter of young designers (slash total office fav) she can sniff it out a mile off. But what to do with all that knowledge? Well, it took Brexit, Trump, a Sarah depressed with the state of the world for the lightbulb moment, asking herself: “why don’t you just DO something about it!” And so heralded the birth of #SarahsList – initially a mental one, cataloguing the TYTs (Talented Young Things) that she meets on a daily basis, before becoming an Instagram hashtag, used to convince the industry to give the designers she found, and was excited by, paid gigs or freelance work, to get them consultancies or just to find people that could give them a helping hand.

“I meet students in class and designers starting up in their studios, in showrooms, and at exhibitions—people of many nationalities,” she said on vogue.com. “What excites me most is finding and understanding those who will shape the future—in the ways they produce items, think about the environment and ethics, and basically add to the human sum of delight in the world by making beautiful, surprising things.” And, as of last night, it’s become so much more – step in Liberty, who have dedicated a special area to six young designers Richard Quinn (above), Conner Ives, Kitty Garratt, Le Kilt, Richard Malone, Marta Jakubowski and Sopho Gongliashvili – in the special #SarahsList area in the new womenswear department. The designer’s pieces will be available to purchase from today on the first floor – their work ranging from specially commissioned pieces to total one-offs. We saw it last night – it looked cracking. So go shop. It’s for a good cause. Here’s what she said about each designer to Vogue…

Richard Quinn

“Richard Quinn (above) staged his brilliantly printed debut show at Liberty during London Fashion Week. What makes him even more special: He’s also a community entrepreneur, having set up his open-access printworks in Peckham in south London for students and other designers to share.”

Conner Ives

“Conner Ives (below) is an American student at Central Saint Martins who makes clothes out of repurposed fabric. I was astonished when I saw his Instagram of his first-year “make a shirt” class project; it was so good I went to see him. He got a bit busy at the end of April, when he designed Adwoa Aboah her Met Gala dress, also from a school pattern he’d made for his first year “white project.” Liberty gave Ives a bunch of scarf scraps, which he diced up with found charity-shop silk scarves to make a series of patchwork shirts—his retail firsts.”

Conner Ives

Kitty Garratt

Kitty Garratt takes worn boots and hand-paints them like a Charleston artist. Liberty is her first splash since she graduated from the B.A. Central Saint Martins class of 2017. I’d seen her work when she came up to apply for a BFC Education Foundation scholarship, which she won basically on the grounds of the wild boots she was wearing, a spot-on, nine-month-ahead preview of the patterned-boot trend that hit the Spring shows we’ve only just witnessed.”

Le Kilt

Sam McCoach is a Scottish designer who mines her national heritage to make an authentically hip label for young women, Le Kilt. She’s another of this admirable generation who act responsibly and build community-supporting personal relationships behind the scenes. McCoach sources kilts and knitwear from traditionally skilled workshops and small factories, and she makes organic denim jeans with a small London supplier. After presenting her ambition to teach sewing skills to young people in Scotland, she won the British division of this year’s Woolmark Prize.”

Marta Jakubowski

Born in Poland and educated at Royal College, Marta Jakubowski (below) is a young feminist designer I met when she was a student; she impressed me with her conceptual mission to speak about the bonds between generations of women. With its glamorous going-to-the-club tailoring—and the puffer jackets to wear on the bus to get there—her latest collection is a breakthrough.”

Marta

Richard Malone

“Richard Malone is an Irish designer with an uplifting flair for vibrant color and patterns. His flared jumpsuit was just picked out by the Museum of Modern Art for its current exhibition, “Is Fashion Modern?” What’s incredible beyond that: Malone’s sourcing. His fabrics are woven by a community-supporting organization of women weavers in Tamil Nadu in southern India. Children are able to go to school because of their mothers’ incomes. And those dazzling colors? Natural dyes.”

Sopho Gongliashvili 

“Sopho Gongliashvili is a Georgian jewelry designer whose work has stuck in my mind ever since she won a commendation at the International Fashion Showcase for emerging talent that we have hosted annually in London since 2012. Gongliashvili’s bold enamel rings and outsize cuffs use traditional Georgian craft skills, which turn them into explosively chic accessories.”

www.libertylondon.com

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