S/S 2010 : The Rising Stars

When Louise Gray says: ‘I love colour everywhere’ she’s not joking – her collections are made up of joyful, quirky and always unusual colour palettes that make her sophisticated yet playful clothes pop. The Scottish born designer is another Central St Martin’s Graduate, who has not only worked with Peter Jensen and Lanvin but also sold work to Diane Von Furstenburg. It’s the balance of simplicity and embellishment, elegance and quirkiness that make Gray’s clothes special: In her last collection, mirrored corset tops, lean blazers and sleek mini-dresses, rendered with flashes of fuchsia, lemon and royal blue, were both fashion forward and surprisingly wearable thanks to Gray’s way with a streamlined, flattering silhouette. ‘Ultimately,’ Gray says of her work, ‘it’s about fun. ’And no-one could argue with that.

With strong, architectural lines, bold silhouettes, an inky palette and a flair for the beautifully dramatic, Hannah Marshall’s collections, each centred round the LBD (her pivotal inspiration) are lessons in how wearable and sexy, conceptual fashion can be. Autumn/winter 09 saw her playing with the idea of fashion as armour – her graphic shapes (sharp shoulders, corseted waists, moulded hips) were rendered in luxe fabrics and shades of black and grey –a powerful, seductive look, constructed yet soft, exactly what Marshall specialises in, and perfect for the women she considers her muses – Carine Roitfeld, Grace Jones and Alison Mosshart. With that list, it’s little wonder she has listed her fashion obsessions as black, shoulder pads, and eyebrows. It comes as some surprise though that such a cutting-edge designer should choose to live in the Essex countryside, but Marshall, who studied at Colchester School of Art and Design, makes her rural life fit perfectly with her high fashion ambitions.

When Krystof Strozyna was growing up in Poland, he was forever flicking through fashion magazines: ‘I was always craving for visuals, I could spend ages looking at one particular image that I liked,’ he explains. After moving to London to study at Central St Martins, he wasted no time in turning his fashion dreams into reality. After debuting his MA collection, he became a first-time winner of New Generation sponsorship from Topshop, and found his collection stocked in Harrods. Three on-schedule collections later, he is becoming known for his way of taking body-con dressing and adding a futuristic edge and elegance to his take on sex appeal, as well as his penchant for big bold jewellery as the essential accessory to his svelte designs. This season holds promise of pieces inspired by: ‘African art and piercings.’ Expect drama.

Not content with creating elegant, avant-garde womenswear, the 30 year old Italian-born Maria Francesca Pepe has another string to her bow - crafting stunning jewellery, not only for her own line, but in collaboration with other London based design stars including Roksanda Illincic and Jens Laugesen. How does she work these two skills alongside each other? She says: ‘I conceive jewellery as the painting and clothing as the frame.’ Certainly, her designs work beautifully together – last season, inspired by 19th century French prostitutes, long, lean, draped jackets and dresses in luxe velvet and embroidered fabrics were offset by sculptural pieces of jewellery, from jagged head pieces to curvy tubular bracelets and cuffs. Pepe describes her aesthetic as ‘a mix of romanticism and pragmatism’ – which sums up the balance between the wonderful and the wearable perfectly.

With their crisp white shirts, beautifully structured tailoring and a killer skinny-leg trouser, it comes as no surprise that Edward Meadham and Benjamin Kirchhoff, started their careers with a menswear line. What is surprising is how beautifully they translate these menswear references into truly feminine collections for Meadham Kirchhoff, the womenswear line they have been creating since 2006. They met at Central St Martins, where British born Meadham studied womenswear, and French born Kirchhoff menswear, and have been honing their talent for a dark but desirable aesthetic. Their skill is to take their classic staples, their distinctive rock’n’roll edge and meld them with perfectly on-trend references. Last season, they listed their inspirations as ‘desire, sex and luxury’ which translated into deconstructed tailoring with raw-edged jackets and shirts, copper-wire brocades and crystal embroidery, and spectacularly decorated Manolo Blahnik boots.

Don’t be deceived by the name: the uber-elegant draping and tailoring of the label Peter Pilotto is actually the work of two men, the half-Austrian, half-Italian Peter Pilotto, and the half-Belgian, half-Peruvian Christopher De Vos. They met while both were studying at Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 2000, where both were inspired by the others work. They started their label in 2007 with Pilotto in charge of colours, prints and beading, while De Vos focused on patterns and shapes. They explain: ‘Each others work was an important stimulation ever since meeting as students, so the decision to join forces was quite easy.’ And the results are quite beautiful - as they like to describe their aesthetic, eclectic, with the concept of the curiosity cabinet remaining a constant inspiration. Their autumn/winter collection mixes kaleidoscopic prints with architectural shapes, short hemlines and sharp shoulders for a line of knock out cocktail dresses.