Graduate Fashion Week: Manchester BA graduate show

Manchester University hits the volume button at Graduate Fashion Week.

Designs by Poppy Warwicker Le-Breton, Jessica Nicoll and Michael Bolton-Heaton at the Manchester BA graduate show Photo: CATWALKING

Manchester University’s BA graduates turned the 19th century crinoline into a 21st century must-have at Graduate Fashion Week in London tonight. (June 8th, 2010).

The REALLY big skirt was the big news. Skirts so wide and high they would have trouble getting into a London taxi, sashayed down the catwalk at Earls Court 2 in every fabric from chiffon to sheep’s wool.

Jessica Nicol brought the show to a finale, with a huge, black chiffon ball-skirt, and shirts featuring a mssive cascade of sleeves and “gloves” falling from each shoulder. The collection owed much to Viktor & Rolf and Maison Martin Margiela, but was nevertheless inventive.

Poppy Warwicker-Le Breton paid homage to Yohji Yamamoto’s giant designs of a decade or so ago, knitted on broomsticks. Time had not diminished her love of the oversized, as she offered gigantic “pom-pom” skirts in extravagantly-patterned, cream wool. The “Twilight” goth was revisited in Millie Betito’s collection of little bra-tops, allied to huge , ballerina-look skirts, awash with pleats and ruffles; while Emma Murphy stitched big, loose, pastel knits, with the air of the thrift shop about them, to clouds of pastel tulle which floated around the models’ legs like giant tutu’s.

Rebecca Thomson, meanwhile, took her experiments in volume into the shirting arena, accessorising a billowing, white, ankle-length shirt-dress with a Brobdingnagian bow at the neck.

The Manchester Uni collection - together with Kingston, one of the strongest to come down the GFW catwalk – also featured a robust dose of commercial clothing, including Rose Whittaker’s trompe l’oeil prints of dungarees on T-shirts worn with real dungarees, and denim jackets with denim, skirt-printed skirts; and Charlotte Smith’s modernist, circle-inspired raglan-sleeve jackets, skirts and dresses in strawberry pink, which looked as if they had been mapped out on the drawing-board with a compass.