Customizations rather than Collaborations

To be honest, I’m getting a bit tired of all these collaborations. It was good business sense (and/or strategy) at the beginning of the recession — like how the power rangers morphed together to create one mighty morphed power ranger — but now it seems saturated and tired. However, a nice and creative move from this is customization. This was often done in the past for charity projects but now it seems purely creative.

A great example is menswear designer Katie Eary’s Nike customization.

On a pure aesthetic level I think these are pretty darn sweet! Although they’re probably a men’s shoe, ah well. Katie is a great new talent to come from the UK and her menswear is pushing boundaries (to use an over used cliché) but also playful and fun.

Sometimes it’s literal and I love this about her designs.

Another great new UK talent is Hannah Marshall

Her womenswear is sexy fierce and so so London (well what it’s like in east London at the moment). Sex and femininity I believe are on the rise in womenswear, there has been to much androgyny that women are probably starting to feel less like women, maybe more powerful but less natural I suppose, this is only an opinion.

Another favourite, is Christopher Raeburn. I am a little obsessed as his design ethos is quite similar to my own, functionalism, using materials for their properties not aesthtics. However the aesthetics are the products of these functions, and for me, I find them rather exciting.

The talent in the UK is creative and rich and is definitely going to colour the future of fashion future!