Because there’s so much to see at London Fashion Week -Days 2 and 3
but we’re not in London, we’re in Brooklyn. Still the number of brands there really tackling issues of sustainability are so much more than in the US. So we’re sharing some of our favorite brands from each day. These aren’t reviews so much as they are “ones worth watching”. Check out Part 1 and Part 3 of this series.
Ray Chu
RAY CHU is a Disruptive, Sexy, A-gender RTW brand established in 2016.
Characterised by a unique combination of refined quality, innovative craftsmanship and the use of carefully placed cut-outs emboldens the brands core, genderless identity. Oversized silhouette cuts that empower confidence. Sustainable by nature, the brand works with dead stock fabric, organic cotton, vegan leather and only produces clothing to order.
IA London
IA London Spring-Summer 2022 collection “In The Light Heart” corresponds with Tadao Ando’s “Weightlessness of concrete”.
Departing from the dominancy of the figurative art prints, IA London’s designer Ira Iceberg deepens into construction, building the new collection around three elements of Ando’s work: concrete, light and water.
The collection is entirely manufactured in England, using sustainable and ethical practices.
Joao Maraschin
Joao Maraschin is a London-based Brazilian designer who launched his eponymous brand in February 2020, following graduation from the MA Womenswear at London College of Fashion.
Community and craftsmanship are at the centre of the brand’s practices and values.
The ethos is based on supporting handmade techniques like crochet and embroidery, as well as working with new discoveries in raw materials, looking at circularity, waste, purpose and human centred design. The brand celebrates diversity proposing new ideas to create a more inclusive scenario to a mature demographic as well as to creative practitioners in vulnerable conditions. The stories behind every relationship are important and key to social, cultural and economic development.
Through many collaborations, the brand stands for equality of rights and fair share. The collections are based in creating narratives, informed by art, critical theory, traditional knowledge and innovation processes.
The style is a hybrid of his Brazilian minimal-tropical origins and European influences.
Palmer//Harding
The designers, Matthew Harding and Levi Palmer, met while studying at Central Saint Martins in 2007. Wanting to express their creativity in a garment that applied to the daily life of the women that surrounded them led the duo to utilise the shirt as a template for creativity. The pair experiment with innovative pattern cutting and draping techniques cultivated through their design education to build directional and desirable collections that constantly evolve the idea of what a shirt can be.
Azura Lovisa
Slow fashion designer Azura Lovisa invites the audience to a hallucinogenic shapeshifting through states of transformation in the natural landscapes where we meet ourselves – the being and becoming of a stone, a breeze, a wave, a human, and beyond human. A body in clothes and in dreams; A collection of visions, drifting in and out of lucidity. A world where the human and spirit planes coexist and overlap – a place of gateways and portals, where myths are born and currents of magic flow. Azura Lovisa presents a collection of seasonless and gender-fluid signature looks that channel an otherworldly cultural hybridity, referencing Southeast Asian folk dress, ecology and the natural world, mythology and shamanism. Featuring handwoven raw silk in shades of sand, deep blue, sun orange, leaf green, and golden sap, organic cotton in shadow black, and gold jewelry cast from spices, seeds and plants adorn body and clothing.
Richard Malone
London-based, Irish-born designer and multi-disciplinary artist Richard Malone, 29, graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2014, where he was awarded the prestigious LVMH Grand Prix scholarship. His graduate collection opened the year’s BA Fashion press show and was awarded the Deutsche Bank Award for Fashion.
Malone has become the fashion industry go-to for authenticity, resourcefulness and rebellion. In February 2020, rounding off the meteoric first chapter of his career, Malone was named the winner of the International Woolmark Prize – praised by the panel of judges for his ‘radically transparent’ working practise, revolutionary approach to research and a redefined notion of luxury.
