Oxford Fashion Studio Launches Platform ‘Emerge’ with 10 On-the-Rise Designers During London Fashion Week
Represent by The Riviere Agency.
On Sunday at Devonshire Square, Oxford Fashion Studio (OFS) presented 10 amazing designers from across the UK, USA, Australia, Canada and India to launch collections during London Fashion Week as part of OFS’s new emerging designer platform Emerge.
Oxford Fashion Studio is known for highlighting independent fashion designers from all over the world; to date giving nearly 700 designers, from 70+ different countries, over the past 10 years a platform to showcase their talent with a top tier runway experience.
1pm Show
SuKaz
Each SuKaz jacket, created by Designer Susan Hollingsworth, is the product of 20 years living in international locales. A labour of love between designer, textile artisan, and seamstress; the wearable art pieces serve as tangible reminders of cultural craft passed down through generations. Telling a unique story, threads of ancient traditions are interwoven with flashes of contemporary elegance. Each jacket is a labor of love between designer, fibre artist and seamstress; a reflection of countless hours spent haunting markets and bazaars from Africa to the Middle and Far East, points along the Silk Road of Central Asia, and the mother lode, the Grand Bazaar of Istanbul. The fibre art panel in each jacket is original, showcasing needle art techniques including embroidery, fabric origami, needle felting, ribbon work and appliqué. An individual panel can take up to 50 hours start to finish, not including the intensive training process each artisan undertakes to learn basic techniques. Buttons are often hand-crafted, tatted, kiln-forged (metal) or kiln-fired (glass), and the fabrics themselves might be embroidered, manipulated through smocking and folding, or hand woven on wooden looms. Crafted to the finest detail, SuKaz jackets are one-of-a-kind works of art.
KELSE
A contemporary yet timeless brand that encapsulates the art of craftsmanship, where the love for design is fuelled by the appreciation of manual labour, free from gender barriers. With a deep focus on the artistry of the pieces resulting in high quality, sustainable designs all designed and manufactured in London. The collection has been directly inspired by the work of artist Georgia o’Keeffe, whose work largely involved paintings of enlarged flowers, and landscapes, encapsulating her feelings. Much like the work of o’Keeffe, the collection is centred around nature, with (90%) of the products being derived from natural sources.
Rowena Meghan
Perth, Australia | IG
Rowena Meghan is a luxury swim and resort wear label based in Perth Australia, founded by Rowena Schultz in 2019, that draws inspiration from sub cultures and time periods. Rowena Meghan was born from the love of fashion and life, designs that celebrate the uniqueness for the world and the people that live in it. Destination: Punk draws on punk culture mixed with resort ready-to-wear. The collection was inspired by the current time we are living in, fighting for rights, fighting for our environment and fighting for freedom.
Aimee Nielsen
Aimee’s new collection ‘A Tempestade’ is inspired by the symbolic nature of the phases of a storm: the calmness before, the storm itself, and the destruction afterwards. The collection also draws on inspiration from the 16th and 17th centuries. The collection incorporates menswear, womenswear, and gender-neutral pieces while utilizing techniques such as hand embroidery, draping, pleating, and tailoring. Aimee’s previous work has been featured in La Botanica Magazine Winter Issue N.6, Newsweek, Popsugar, and Zimbio as well as having been displayed at the Museum at FIT in New York. Aimee maintains a couture line, Aimee Nielsen, and an active/sport line, Nielsena Sport. Aimee’s designs are available for celebrity styling through The Trendhaus based out of Los Angeles, California.
Tokyo Twiggy
Tokyo Twiggy is a custom streetwear brand with original textiles that create edgy yet comfortable garments. Her SS22 collection is named “Retrograde.” Designer Jenn Felts, who graduated from The Art Institute of Indianapolis, struggled to find fabrics to meet her vision which led to creating her own textiles and the founding of Tokyo Twiggy in 2018. In 2019 Jenn won the Indiana Fashion Week 2019 Emerging Designer Competition judged by Fern Mallis of New York Fashion Week.
3pm Show
Leah Kelly by Design
Far North Qld, Australia | Web
Leah Kelly by Design, stands for sustainable handmade one-off couture gowns of organic wearable art. Leah presents an organic concept process of using banana bark replacing corset boning, pineapple fibre for tulle, crystals for buttons, & the original timelessness of hand embroidery. “Rainforest to Runway” is a collection of couture gowns created using natural fibres and made sustainably off-the-grid in the middle of the Rainforest of Far North Qld, Australia.
First Nations Fashion
Tsilhqot’in Nation, BC, Canada | IG
First Nations Fashion designer Jill Setah was born in Oliver, BC Canada in 1982 to Residential School Survivors Norah Setah from the Yunesit’in Government, and Louis August of Neskonlith Indian Band of Chase, BC. She has been a registered member of the Yunesit’in Government since birth. She released her SS22 collection ‘MMIW’ with OFS this season.
Bani Pasricha
Bani Pasricha, a biotechnologist by education, brought her love for natural history and art to life through founding the New Delhi based label in 2011. The brand spirit is encapsulated by a vintage heart with a contemporary soul. Bani has worked with a number of Indian television personalities including Rashami Desai, Sunny Leone, Esha Gupta and Sophie Chaudhary. The brand has been seen in London, Dubai and Cannes and has been featured in Harper’s Bazaar and Cosmopolitan.
TSX Design House
TSX Design House is a socially responsible brand founded in 2002 by Ebony Adell with a mission to transform the fashion industry by creating luxury sustainable products and services that encourage consumers to participate in a socially conscious, sustainable lifestyle. The brand creates its own designs, patterns and prints based on chakra energy to make limited-edition sustainable urban couture collections ranging from lingerie, casual wear, handbags and athletic wear to Chakra Gowns at three different price points. Transcend8 is an 8 piece sustainable luxury collection inspired by the chakras of the 7 Orishas plus Yemoja, mother of all Orishas (Universal Mother).
Daykeyla
Daykeyla, by designer Daykeyla McGee, promotes self love and positive body images. Daykeyla’s latest collection, Anansi, is inspired by the story-telling trickster god of the same name in the West African, Ashanti tradition. In one of these stories Anansi teaches two boys how to make kente cloth, a hand made, basket woven cloth of cotton or silk threads, which is used as a form of story-telling.
About Oxford Fashion Studio
Since 2009 Oxford Fashion Studio, led by Carl Anglim and Tiffany Saunders, has helped 700+ designers from 70+ countries to launch collections into the UK, USA and European markets. The company began at Oxford University and then grew from there to London, New York, Milan and Paris producing shows and campaigns for independent designers across all four fashion capitals. The company has produced runway shows, speaker events, retail events, photography and art exhibitions, film screenings, networking events, live photo shoots, live fashion sketching, city-wide late openings of high street retailers and museum lates including a fashion takeover of the Ashmolean Museum attracting 2,500+ attendees. This year Oxford Fashion Studio is set to play a leading role in helping designers, fashion brands and the industry as a whole to bounce back from Covid by launching a new platform for emerging designers, by introducing a sustainable design programme and by delivering Faduma’s Fellowship.
About Emerge:
Emerge: the new platform for emerging designers by Oxford Fashion Studio. Built with fresh eyes by experienced hands for a new generation of design talent. Created specifically to meet the needs of emerging designers: high-quality, industry-connected, cost-sensitive and backed by an experienced and friendly team. Design is about ideas and a diversity of ideas is in all of our interests. Lockdowns have hit emerging independent designers hard. But now, with shows scheduled for London in September, it’s time to emerge: www.emergeshow.co.
##
Learn More
oxfordfashionstudio.com
@oxfordfashionstudio
emergeshow.co
@emergeshow.co
With love,
FWO
