Photo Credit: Andrea Brocca
Despite the tumultuous year that the fashion industry and thus, the young up-and-coming designers have had to endure professionally under a pandemic, we as audiences have not been left with a shortage of incredible talent and skill. With young designers seemingly breaking boundaries and head revolutionary fashion ideas at a faster and more exciting rate than ever, we’ve decided to compile a list of ten of our favourite up-and-coming designers to keep your eye on in the coming years.
Araki Shiro
Based in Fukuoka, Shiro is a costume designer who creates beautiful avant-garde garments. Araki Shiro’s (@arakishiro) collections heavily experiment with volume, textures, form, and space. Inspired by the likes of Eiko Ishioka; costume designer to Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula (1992), Shiro focuses on symbolism and eccentric styles that story tell and draw focus on the big screen. These intentions and inspirations shine through in Shiro’s work, with layers, textures, and an abundance of natural materials allowing Shiro to experiment with space and construction. One scroll through Arakishiro’s Instagram gives you a sense of the intricacy involved in Shiro’s pieces, and the attention paid to the movement of the wearer. From intricate wire headpieces, colourful organza ruffled dresses, to nude fragmented costume dresses, Araki Shiro’s pieces tell a story like a piece of ballet.
Weslah
With custom pieces featured in Lil Nas X’s recent hit music video Montero (Call Me by Your Name), Weslah’s designs (@weslah) are the embodiment of fantasy fashion. Potentially best recognised for their unique corseted hoodies and bodysuits, the world of Weslah fashion is one that invites its audiences to experiment with sharp, tailored, unworldly designs. Transcriptions from Weslah’s website read ‘the girls will walk under the digital eye of humanity … the runway will be an energetic transference- a performance of altered reality’, and altered reality it indeed delivers. With spikey tattooed jeans and jewel-encrusted writings, Weslah designs provide an armour-like collection that offers empowerment and fantastical inspiration to its consumers.
Bewde
The Haute Couture Womenswear brand Bewde (@Bewdebyreagen) creates sleek, tailored, elegant designs in the name of feminine couture. The designs are influenced by a Georgian town that was also the home of Bewde’s designer. Bewde offers an aesthetically pleasing symmetry-based collection that adheres and celebrates the female form. A glance at their Instagram offers an insight into the lustrous, refined aesthetic that the brand bases itself upon. From the satin, shoulder strong, colour block clothing, the main inspiration behind Bewde’s designs is clear; women. Bewde’s designs celebrate femininity to the fullest, including on their about us; ‘The women you see have inspired and influenced my life in such a variety of ways … these women are the very foundation underpinning my desire to create, and thus will every client from this moment forward’.
Andrea Brocca
Womenswear designer and artist Andrea Brocca (@Andreabrocca) has made waves in the industry with a ground-breaking debut graduate collection before sweeping up the place as the record holder of the youngest couturier. The Central Saint Martin’s graduate digitally launched their collection Senanayake (named after his mother’s family name) and captured audience attention. To the Uckers by Shy Girl soundtrack, Brocca stripped down a red, pleated gown from the collection to reveal the under structure of his piece, perhaps a commentary on how the pandemic has laid bare to the world the intricate work and structures involved in creating such couture. Brocca’s work pays close attention to form and shape, and seems to take on glamour through a more technical and symbolic eye.
Alexandra Sipa
Home of the recycled wire lace-look, meet Alexandra Sipa (@Alexandrasipa). After previously working for the likes of Balenciaga and Oscar de la Renta, Alexandra Sipa graduated from Central Saint Martins, birthing an entirely unique and striking style of design. A designer that engages with contemporary consumers’ needs and desires; sustainability and delicate beauty. Sipa sources cables from recycling centres, hoping to make a difference to the recorded 50 million tonnes of electronic waste that is disposed of each year. Using the recycled wires, Sipa crafts voluminous ruffles and skirts alongside mountains of intricate lace-look wiring to craft delicate bralettes and accessories. Alexandra Sipa’s designs consistently deliver on colour, intricacy, and environmental concerns.
Robert Wun
With a contemporary take on womenswear, another designer focusing intently on form is Robert Wun (@Robertwun). London-based, the design label experiments with silhouettes and offers a more ultramodern take on the regular womenswear designs. Inspired by science fiction and the natural world surrounding him, Wun’s designs are almost alien-like, offering designs that tackle earthly configurations as opposed to a more direct look at the feminine form itself. It’s through this that Wun makes his mark as one of the more revolutionary up-and-comers of his time, his designs seemingly having purpose in exploring the natural and intergalactic world in a more artistic manner. Robert Wun’s designs are anything but limited in terms of their style and material, with pleats, corseted panels, and peplum silhouettes making consistent appearances, but still not defining the collection, the versatile media of which Wun’s collections thrive upon.
FEBEN
Founded by a Central Saint Martin’s graduate, design label FEBEN (@its.febs) is more than a label. The designs celebrate a variety of cultures to which the designer has been exposed, reclaiming (as the designer quotes) the ‘displacement in a surrealistic approach to black identity’. FEBEN’s designs clearly map a journey of the exploration of self-identity, taking on a highly surrealist approach to the designs, which spells harmonious results. In a sense, there are no borders or restraints on the way in which FEBEN’s garments are approached or executed, with bright colour palettes, muted tones, or colour blocking steering the collection at any given moment. FEBEN’s designs almost resemble something of the pop art era, in that their more recent looks are on the whole playful in colour and style but full of substance in terms of storytelling. The designs are undeniably unforgettable.
Octavia Banks
A growing presence in the industry and on Instagram, meet the hand marble phenomenon design label Octavia Banks London (@Octaviabankslondon). The designer, Charlotte Octavia Banks is a British American designer who graduated from Manchester School of Art. Notably, Octavia Banks London carries collections of hand-marbled garments some RTW, most made to order. Charlotte is a one-woman band, working solely on the designs, heavily influenced by the slow fashion movement, aiming to create unique, sustainable pieces which customers will appreciate for a lifetime. The designs feature countless colourways and styles of tops in a marbled pattern, a consistent trademark design for Octavia Banks which is sure to head a marbled clothing trend as the design label continues to grow in popularity.
Miss Sohee
Sohee Park is more commonly known as Miss Sohee (@miss_sohee) and is a Womenswear Designer that has consistently made huge strides in the industry since debuting. Originating as an illustrator, the designer began to shift focus from paper to materials, creating 3D versions of her visions which she has come to define as demi-couture. After graduation, Park’s designs attracted the attention of the likes of British Vogue, LOVE, Vanity Fair and have even been worn by the likes of Miley Cyrus, Jhene Aiko, Bella Hadid, Cardi B, and more. Miss Sohee’s designs are full of flower embellished clothing, from caged crinolines to stunning floral print long trains to playful skirts. Sohee’s designs almost take the form of flowers themselves, and the debuting of Park’s collections was like the finding of an entirely new species of plant itself. Influenced by the natural world and particularly female artists of the nineteenth century such as Kahlo, Miss Sohee is a design label that you don’t want to miss the growth of.
Anna Rankin
Womenswear designer Anna Rankin (@annnarankin) has the power to transport you to another dimension within which the 16th century and the 21st coexist as one and blend seamlessly. Rankin reveals that the inspiration behind her collection comes from Mary Queen of Scots and her handmaidens. The 16th-century silhouette is a clear influence in the shapes and styles of Rankin’s looks, but the more subtle influences of the same era in Rankin’s looks come from the landscapes of which her muses travelled and lived, namely, the French and Scottish. The Celtic and French influences are apparent in the beautiful and yet fearless, almost Joan of Arc-inspired shape to the designs. Anna Rankin’s collection is based on warm, earthy tones and experiments heavily with fun skirts – a favourite of the collection includes ‘The Dress’, a piece with a corseted body and dramatic skirts and sleeves.
Words By Megan Selway
