Fashionclash: Graduationshow ABKM 2011

During the Fashionclash-event in Maastricht the Academy of Fine Arts in Maastricht (ABKM) also presents her graduation-show. This year, nine students presented their final collection. A few of them really stood out, like Janny Kloszynski, Anne-Katrin Bannier, Anna Liesnik and Eva Bellengé. Hopefully we will meet some of them again in the future.

 

Graduation Shows 2011 – ArtEZ Arnhem

On thursday night, right after Topshop was opened in Amsterdam, Arnhem became the fashion hotspot again. There the fashion crowd (and many moms, dads, brothers, sisters and friends) gathered for the graduation show (one of a total of 5 shows!!) of 22 ArtEZ students. In a warm, sold out and fully packed show area, which is part of the Arnhem Mode Biënnale, we witnessed one and a half hour of some great ArtEZ fashion.

The collections of all 22 students couldn’t be more diverse. From childrenswear (Cleome Clements) to minimalistic (Sanne Schepers)- and survival (Jarwo Gibson) wear, from skinhead styles (Tom Nijhuis) to asymmetric items (AnneMarie Keizers) and from on trend fashion (Zonia van Uden) to over the top, structured designs (Annie Bosman); a perfect mix of signatures and styles.

ArtEZ seemed especially proud of talents like Linda de Jong, Anne Bosman (structured menswear), Mattia Akkermans (bright designs, crazy styling), Magnus Dekker (a collection made out of flags) and Sanne Schepers.

Linda de Jong presented some extraordinary selfmade fabrics. She showed a lot of knitwear and even used plastic in some of her Chanel-inspired designs.

Another great collection was made by Sanna Schepers. Sanne showed skirts and tops, which were scecretly attached to each other. Her designs looked simple, but in fact were made out of some difficult constructions.

A graduation student who really stood out too is William Tan. His designs (he showed so many looks) were perfectly tailored and his prints were stunning.

All these students proved they have a clear vision of their own style and potential. They also know how to turn 6 or 7 looks into a collection, which not everyone can.

ArtEZ received a Grand Seigneur this month; a corpus award for people/companies in the fashion industry and judging from some of the great collections we saw this award was well deserved.

Check out the gallery below.

 

Marije de Haan is the winner of Lichting 2010

Tonight fourteen different students from seven different academies presented their graduation collections during Amsteram Fashion Week. They showed their finest work in front of a large fashion audience and in front an international jury. That jury had to decide which one of the students had the best collection.

After a long catwalkshow and some wise deliberation the jury named Marije de Haan as the winner of Lichting 2010. With her menswear collection named ‘flatliners’ Marije wins a money prize of 10.000 and gets a chance to work with G-star during the next New York Fashion Week. With the money she would like to expand her collection.

Marije studied at the Royal Academie of Arts in the Hague. Her menswear collection was inspired by crime-scene photography from the beginning of the twentieth century.

We wish her all the best of luck and hope to hear more from this new designtalent very soon!

Graduation Shows: Artez – Arnhem

As the last fashion academy Artez held it’s graduation show last Friday. And the saying last but not least does apply here, cause we saw a lotttt of talent.

It was probably the hottest day of the year. Yet the 38 degrees didn’t stop the students, the models and everyone else involved from delivering a great show.

Kris Berden
Kris Berden was one of the students who proved to understand fashion. Her collection was fully built around pleats in al kinds of shapes and size. They were there on a skirt, a top and a dress, which were all in black. The pleats came back in Berden’s grey coats. One ultra-thin and slightly transparent, the other somewhat thicker. All outfits looked great, but maybe the jute top and the black transparent ‘cape’ could have had some pleat-details as well. That way the collection would have been slightly more cohesive.

Britt Tan & Fred Farrow
Two students really dared to experiment with their graduation collections. Britt Tan and Fred Farrow both used a great variaty of colors, materials, shapes and techniques. Britt Tan showed us a bright yellow jumpsuit, a loose knitted orange dress, a skirt made out of all kinds of different pieces of fabric with frayed ends. Her models all wore head scarves. Fred Farrow came up with a few light-colored coats. He used some trenchcoat-inspiration and showed one example with fur and checks. He mixed his coats with printed, colored skirts and tights. On all looks loose pieces of fabric were hanging.
We appreciate the fact that Tan & Farrow both showed some gut with their experimental collections. Yet we feel there collections could have been more cohesive and better tailored. Cause both collections came across as a little messy.

Lotte van Schijndel
Before Lotte van Schijndel’s the models started walking they all stood still on stage in a certain pose. We then could already see some great designs. Lotte van Schijndel made a collection with a classic feeling. Loose clothes, long silhouettes and plain fabrics. The blouses and coats were all without buttons. A few waistcoats gave the models some shape. There was no fuss; Van Schijndel didn’t add anything unnecessary. And that’s a good thing cause minimalism is hot in fashion these days!

Piotrek Panszezyk
Piotrek Panszezyk took the hottest fashion item of the moment, the jumpsuit, and gave it a whole new classy image. He gave all (of his many) designs a feminine, classic twist by adding some sort of airy trail to them. He showed one in black, one with lace on the sides, one white, one red, one purple. All looks varied slightly from each other, yet were still an obvious collection. The only misplaced item was an animal printed fur design. It didn’t look feminine or classy and had no connection to the rest of the collection. One other thing we didn’t understand were the loose ends on – for example – the olive green short and the collar of the purple outfit. But altogether Panszezyk’s collection was pretty impressive.

Melissa Siegrist
One last great collection we want to highlight was that of Melissa Siegrist. She designed womenswear with a very masculine touch. She mostly used grey and showed some perfectly-tailored shorts and blouses. She gave her collection a sporty vibe by adding polo’s and shorts made of jersey fabric. And her transparent pair of navy-colored pants just fit in perfectly.

Graduation Shows: AMFI Fashion Transit

Tuesday evening The Amsterdam Fashion Institute celebrated the 5^th anniversary of it’s graduation event. They organised a exhibition and a talk show and of course all graduation students were present at the World Fashion Centre to show their collections.

Most of these collections looked solid and well-made. Some people in the audience already said the AMFI students showed the best designs so far.

One thing that struck us was the fact that the students chose either very thin, transparent fabrics of heavy, thick ones. There was not a lot in between.

A few students really stood out with their work. One of them was Samira Algoe. She designed a menswear collection. Geometric fields were visible on her designs, remarkably colored in shades of pink, turquoise, grey and ultra-light yellow. Algoe’s pants and waistcoat were perfectly tailored. And for the fact that she even came up with a quilted coat she earns some extra points.

Another of our AMFI favorites was Roya Hesam. She used ultra-thin, airy, fabrics, which were sometimes partly transparent and other times gave away a lot of the models’ bodies. A pair of beautiful pleated pants and a brown dress with puff sleeves  were perfection. And although the clothes were very revealing, the models looked very elegant and sophisticated in them.

Merel de Jong, who actually kicked off the show, didn’t go for the easy way. She chose to mix metallics with thin fabrics throughout her collection. Therefore her clothes were a mix of stiff and smooth materials. She used white and silver, but also transparent red and copper. Apart from the fact that her clothes looked great, she even managed to design a few matching metallic accessories.

Floor Kolen closed the show. Her designs had lots of eyecatchers. First were the masks, second were the huge polka dots, third: the creative collars and last the stiff bodies Kolen let her models wear. She must have used some iron wire to let the clothes stay in shape. This collection was not the most wearable we’ve seen, but it surely showed creativity.

And last but not least, hats off to:

Daniella Hod, who really made a collection and was creative with shape and material.

Hilde Eijgenraam, for using prints when hardly anybody dared to do that.

Suzanne van Rooij, who came up with nice shapes and paid attention to detail.

Graduation Shows: HKU – Utrecht

Yesterday 25 students of the HKU (Hogeschool voor de kunsten Utrecht) presented their graduation collections. In a beautiful location, called Winkel van Sinkel, they all gave their own little fashion show. The event was named ‘Platform’, yet each student could give his/her collection it’s own name. But apart from the name, they also had to come up with a theme, a collection (of course), the styling, the make-up, the choreography and the music. So you’ll guess they’d been working on this for months.

All the hard work was definitely visible; we saw some great collections.

Let’s start with Mariko Ferrier. Her theme was ‘The beauty of the ugly truth’. Her models first walked on stage very slowly, but started to walk faster towards the end. Her clothes were a mix of beautiful and ugly details. She, for example used light transparent fabrics combined with heavy, thick woollen parts. Her pants, her jackets and her tops all had wholes in them. They were hanging together by thick threads of wool. We loved the dip-dying she used, yet the music was awful.

Then we had Barbara Langendijk. She called her collection ‘Me versus My identity’ and was inspired by the search of her own identity. Her models stepped on the runway in towering high shoes and wore eye-catching glasses. Barbara had used her own shadow in her designs, which therefore had very high shoulders. She came up with strange combinations of fabrics like velvet and very thin transparent ones. An item we very much liked, was her beige cape.

The presentation of Mark Stadman, a fashion communication student, really stood out. Mark, who named his collection ?Mark, took his inspiration from the boy-bands in the nineties. He came up with five totally different outfits to stress the individual characters of ‘his boy-band’. His models had studied strange movements and wore crazy wigs. Mark didn’t design a collection, yet he managed to portray a very clear fashion message.

Esther Vijftigschild used the life’s tale of her Grandmother’s skin as a starting point for her collection ‘The metaphor of skin’. Like your skin can tell the story of your life, Esther did that with her clothes. Her designs were a mix of light and heavy fabrics. They had accentuated shoulders and volume in strange places. The ends of the fabric were decorated with thick wool. The silhouette was long.

Roos Woudenberg designed a good collection of men’s clothes. Not only did the designs look very wearable, they were all made out of sustainable materials too. Shades like brown/deep red were combined with dark blue. Especially the coats looked strong. Hats off for Roos for this sustainable and fashionable collection.

Jan Boelo Drenth’s collection was (like his music) very Gothic. He designed everything in black from capes to trails and cowls. It felt dark and mysterious, like he intended it. Jan used many different fabrics and created lots of volume. His great passion for couture was visible is lots of small accents he’d put on his garments. The good thing about this collection was that it was cohesive and became more dramatic with each outfit appearing on the runway. The skirts and the trails became bigger with each look. That’s how a good collection works. Well done.

Graduation shows: WDKA – Rotterdam

As the end of the school year is approaching all fashion academies are presenting their graduation collections. Yesterday it was the Willem De Kooning Academy in Rotterdam who showed us the work of their graduation students. The Schiecentrale was their show area, a good choice, cause it all felt very professional.

After a few second and third year students showed off their designing skills, it was time to shine for thirteen fourth year students.

One thing that struck us was the great choice of colors. The students, independently of each other chose the most oustanding colors. Many shades that are in fashion now, like camel, peach, lilac and turquoise, were mixed & matched into wonderful eye-catching outfits.

The show started off with several design by Evalien van Gemeren, named Eva. She came up with colorful prints, which she called self-developed hieroglyphs. Overall her designs had a quite wide silhouette and came across as a bit manly.

Musa Shah presented a men’s collection, called Connected intimacy. Although…manly….. His fabrics were thin, transparent and shiny and thus gave the outfits a very soft touch. Some people will love it and some will hate it. But the truth is, Musa’s clothes were all very well made.

One of the collections that would probably sell very well was that of Ruby Verhoeven. She presented a classical and very wearable collection. Ruby played with the details of her clothes, like the pockets and zippers. They all appeared to be something different than what they looked like. Her fabrics were thin and feminine and the colors of the designs looked great together, especially with the blue shoes the models wore.

The collection of Anke de Vor, named TriBe, showed – again – a wonderful color palette. Peach, lilac and terracotta for example. Anke used a great print and also mixed jute with cotton for her imagine tribe. The clothes were based on those of neo-hippies. And for one of the designs (a peach-colored mix between a jumpsuit and harem pants) we sure could tell comfort and movement were important aspects in this collection.

Noortje Zijlstra’s collection caught our attention, while it was remarkable, yet not very wearable. The serie of dresses, named Meisjes met baarden existed of several dresses attached to the models’ faces by a small wire or threads, like a beard. The idea was fun, yet it made the actual clothes fade into the background.

The last collection we would like to mention was Zoot me if you can, by Mandy Minkman. Not only were her men’s clothes very well-made, we loved the whole concept behind it too. Mandy was inspired by the Zoot-suit from the late 30’s, mostly worn by jazz-musicians. This was visible through the great pants she designed with outstanding proportions.

We’re very curious about what we’re going to hear from these students in the future. But so far it looks very promising…

Graduationshows 2009, #2 Rotterdam

The location for the graduationshow of Willem de Kooning Academy was typical Rotterdam: the Schiecentrale in trendy Lloyd-district. Raw, industrial, full of energy. The collections also represented that atmosphere, with focus on construction, shape and neutral colors.

Graduationshows 2009, #1 The Hague

The Royal Academy of Art in The Hague is the first academy this year to present the graduation-collections of their fashionstudents. There were some strong collections, with focus on shapes and volumes, bright colors, fabrics and personal statements. It was the first time we saw influences from Bas Kosters and Gareth Pugh.  And that’s a compliment !

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