Graduating a fashion student during a pandemic is no doubt daunting. It might explain the overarching themes of chaos and escapism in the collections and personal thoughts of many who completed their diploma or Bachelor’s degree in the discipline here in Singapore this year.
Thankfully, equally salient in our conversations with them: talk about growth, discovery and mending. Here, we spotlight 13 from the Class of 2021 who give us hope for the future of fashion.
The Indonesian graduate’s dark yet whimsical collection is titled “Down The Rabbit Hole” – after the first chapter in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Her inspiration? Hitting adulthood – or in her own words, “coming of age” – in Singapore alone without being able to travel home (thanks, Covid).
Using a contrasting colour palette of black and fuchsia, she plays with volume and undulating floral details (she’s fascinated with couture) to create pretty and sumptuous tailored gowns and coats that Simone Rocha fans might dig. “The whole experience of creating the project during the pandemic and at this stage in life has forced me to be more independent and flexible,” she says.
“For example, there were limited fabric choices available and unexpected delays were common – all challenges that I had to work around in the race to complete the collection on time.”
Singaporean Ow’s unlikely source of inspiration: her mother’s home-cooked meals, which offered comfort in times of stress. They prompted her to delve into Japan’s bento box culture that equates the presentation of a meal with the strength of the relationship between the parent (often the one behind it) and child (its consumer).
The colours of dishes often found in a bento (think onigiri and tamagoyaki) led to Ow’s use of red, white, yellow and black to create the likes of minimalist yet dramatic dresses. Meanwhile, the different compartments in a bento kit were cleverly translated into pockets that could be detached and used as bags. Ow’s message behind this, um, tastefully executed collection: never take our loved ones and what they do for us for granted.
Fun fact: Poh’s grandmother Ellen has a journal in which she’s singled out over time more than 700 songs from between the ’50s and ’70s. Dedicating her graduate collection to the melophile matriarch, Poh has in turn curated sets of five tunes from the book then interpreted each one into a look using brain scans as a visual reference.
Her idea is to give form to the emotional power of music on the mind and body and, true to the concept, the results are as intellectual as they are heartwarming – or should we say, cosy. Tailored or body-skimming separates boast exaggerated sleeves and appendages crafted from a satin-like fabric, resembling pillowy, wearable sculptures that wouldn’t look out of place at an underground club.
Titled “Fallible”, Tan’s sustainable graduate collection is grounded in the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi – or more specifically Rei Kawakubo’s famous “hole” sweater from 1982 that she cites as a key inspiration. Focusing on the idea of mending, she deconstructs deadstock fabrics then repairs them so to speak, while her clean and modern silhouettes are inspired by the work of space-age chic pioneer Pierre Cardin.
For all of the collection’s apparent simplicity, there was madness to her method. “One of the garments, for example, required me to remove individual threads then weave back in new ones,” she says. “The whole process took a toll on my eyes and was really time-consuming.”
The name of and theme behind the Singaporean graduate’s collection is far from pretty: dysmenorrhoea aka menstrual cramps. Her dramatic confections – tiered skirts and dresses, and ruffled bra tops crafted from a mix of tulle and other materials and embellishments that lend both volume and tactility – are twistedly so. (Naturally, the dominant colour throughout is crimson.)
Despite her artful hand and eye for detail, she admits to sharing the same concerns as many of her peers. “Graduating and deciding on one’s future is definitely hard, especially in the middle of a pandemic… But we can always start small. Building experience and exposure are the most important for us fresh graduates. We should just keep trying – we don’t have anything to lose anyway,” she says. Here’s another “A” for attitude
It’s little surprise that the work of William Blake – known for his idiosyncratic, Pre-Romantic views on the world – would resonate with curious, truth-seeking Gen Zs. What by the 18th-century poet has stuck with this graduate: the idea that perception is subjective and multifaceted (see the 1790 Blake poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell in which he writes: “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite”).
To represent the concept of endlessness, Wu’s designed conceptual garments based on optical illusions and the mobius strip – an ambitious technical feat. “In my attempt to create new volumes and silhouettes, I had draped strips of paper onto the mannequins. When it was time to commence on the actual construction (with fabric) though, I had to reverse my design process,” she explains. “It was very challenging as I was breaking rules and exploring new principles.”
This spunky graduate delivers one of the most coherent and clever collections of her cohort. “‘Idle Indulgence’ redefines productivity in times of isolation,” reads the write-up explaining her project. Its starting point: the so-called frivolous act of dressing up while staying in (hands up if you can relate).
Liu’s approach however is anything but. Using a hotchpotch of sourced recycled materials (faulty samples from mass-market retailers, textile waste from upholstery companies, swatches from fabric books) in a bid to be environmentally conscious, she’s fashioned out coats and dresses with cushion-like finishes as a playful ode to home wear.
“Having to create volume using limited resources meant being more creative and as access to the machines in school was limited, I resorted to hand-sewing to piece my garments together,” she explains. More proof of her resourcefulness: She’s started her own brand (tentatively named Scrapditch) that creates clothes from discarded upholstery samples.
“The motivation came from the limitation of jobs available in the industry right now,” she says. “There is value in getting experience, but opting for growth through self-exploration as an alternative is more viable in light of current circumstances.”
A romantic sense of innocence pervades Chia’s collection, which draws from anime – the designer’s form of escapism during these troubled times – and is aptly titled Kaiso, the Japanese term for reminiscence. The silhouettes of her tailored robes, tunic tops and pants are a throwback to apparel from the Edo period, when manga – the roots of anime – was born.
While the techniques she had used are basic – pleating, gathering and incorporating style lines as they remind her of the strokes used in the art form – Chia’s hand is neat and meticulous. “Just the amount of prep work needed was challenging and required patience, but I enjoyed getting creative with these simple methods of sewing as they accentuate the garment,” she says.
Her inspiration has also meant that her pieces are non-gender binary. “I appreciate how anime characters don’t conform to their gender – men can wear crop tops and women need not be feminine.”
The closing look in this Indonesian graduate’s collection (seen here) makes one ponder: Where does something begin and end? Going by the tension in the sleeves and legs of this abstract, tailored creation, it’s hard to decipher – and that’s part of the intrigue to Terrapatries’ work and point of view as a young designer. She dares to dare.
To create this number, she played with stretch jerseys – inserting wire to create graphic hoop-like sleeves and stretching the material beyond convention (such as right down to the shoes). Incidentally, the constraints brought about by the pandemic partly influenced her aesthetic. Not being able to stay in the school studio for long hours meant that she had to work at home where space was limited, forcing her to get extra creative in order to challenge silhouettes and create something impactful, she says.
Unlike most of her peers, this 23-year-old did not create outfits per se. Instead, she focused on a more technical – and highly valuable – side of the business: inventing biodegradable material (read: bioplastics) that can be transformed repeatedly into new and wearable garments, offering a possible solution to fashion’s short cycle.
Using agar, alginate and starch, she concocted her own formula and experiments to test the matter’s durability. From the get-go, she thought big. The most technically challenging aspect of her project, she says, was making the bio-textiles on a large scale. “There are many existing machinery, materials and technology that can be utilised to create larger pieces of bioplastics, but perhaps due to the pandemic, there were no companies that wanted to help create my collection,” she says.
That didn’t stop her. “I used acrylic sheets to create mould trays for the bio-textiles. It meant producing less, but gave me more control.”
Instead of looking outwards, this 21-year-old turned to herself and her own interests and ambitions to create her graduate collection, explaining its title “Solipsis” (the theory that the self is all that can be known to exist).
Tailoring has always been something that she’s into – combined with her vivid, detailed dreams, the result is a smorgasbord of oversized, intentionally misshapen coats, shirts, pants and jackets meant to be gender-neutral and that the monochromatic-loving design crowd would want a piece of. Of the collection, she says: “It’s just like a dream – created and believed by you yourself and often no one else.”
Simple ideas can make a huge impact. Tan worked solely with the colour white, but far from bland, her menswear collection features blown-up takes on classic silhouettes, equally exaggerated details as well as an unexpected contrast in materials and techniques all in one garment. Our favourite look? This floor-sweeping coat with a hyper-raised collar and XL (and extra-long) zipper.
Finding a job, she admits, is what she’s most concerned about after graduation. “Fresh graduates lack the industrial experience that most employers look for,” she says. Now, who would like to prove her wrong?
This is a very personal body of work: Its title “Twobigwords” is a reference to how Simorangkir has both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. With blown-up silhouettes, and a wild clash of child-like illustrations, messy knits and narrative embroidery, the chaos she personally experiences is clearly shown.
“Not everyone knows how to react or help us… We have our own ways of coping, but sometimes they may trigger us instead.” The upside to the entire creative process? It was like therapy to the designer. “I took everything slowly – from writing diary entries to silk screening what I had penned down onto the fabric used. I let my anger and frustrations out while distressing the textiles and I enjoyed every step,” she says.
“Being in school has taught me to have courage… It’s inevitable to have doubts at times and that’s okay – you need to believe in yourself – and hard work always pays off.”
This article first appeared in the August 2021 The Great SG Fashion Book edition of FEMALE