Look inside the MA Fashion Showroom 2025

Exploring wardrobe essentials

Isidora Durovic is one of the MA Fashion who graduated in 2025. Soon after she began working on her final collection, she realised that it was forming into an essentials wardrobe inspired by the women that she wanted to dress, such as Joan Didion and Georgia O’Keeffe. “I noticed that there's a uniformity in the way that they dress, and I liked how simple their wardrobes were,” she reflects.

Durovic’s collection is trying to answer questions such as What is effortless?, What does that mean in reality? and What is timeless design? as well as evaluate the longevity of such clothing pieces. “I asked myself, if I could own one piece for decades and not change it, what qualities would it need to have?” she recalls.

Practicality was another key aspect explored in the collection. “I think that often the fashion design industry in general often overlooks the actual usefulness of the object they're making,” she says. “I like my pieces to be versatile so I can work but also go out in them and I wanted to achieve this in the collection as well.”

An example of this approach in the collection is a tailored jacket that could be machine-washed. To create it, Durovic ran tests with removing fusing of a jacket, washing it in high temperature and examining the changes that would happen to its shape. “You don't want to feel super precious about something in your closet — you want to be able to wear it,” she believes.

The experiments also corresponded to her design belief that real doesn’t necessarily mean ordinary. “Sometimes you need to push designs for the shows, but I want them to be able to exist in the real world,” Durovic reflects. “I was simply trying to get to the essence of a garment and how it needs to look to like be a successful staple.”

Connecting two cultures

Kelechi Mpamaugo, fellow MA Fashion 2025 graduate from New York, grew up in a Nigerian household in Washington D.C. and dedicated her collection to exploring the merging of these two cultures.

Mpamaugo had noticed that when people think of African clothing, they instantly think of colours or prints, almost subconsciously going into the space of costume. “It's a monolithic way of understanding what African fashion looks like and I wanted to subvert that dialogue by creating not just outerwear, but essentially streetwear,” she explains.

Being in London has enabled Mpamaugo to discover her identity even more. “I feel like so much fashion comes from the Western perspective, but we've seen Japanese designers, for example, explore their culture by bringing their traditional silhouettes, such as a kimono,” she says. “I wanted to do something similar but from the West African perspective and within the American context.”

For Mpamaugo, her time at CSM has been monumental for gaining design confidence and developing her own style language. “This is a really tough programme, both in and outside the classroom,” she admits. “There's so many people that helped me get to this point and showing in another country and being able to bring together photographers, stylists, jewellery stylists, and to produce a result that we did — it's been amazing.”

Moving forward, Mpamaugo wants to keep building her own brand, KOAT. “I keep getting into situations where people show up for me, and it feels like an alignment with this brand and with this vision,” she says. “So, expanding on that, building that community, fostering a place where creatives can really be set up for success and make the best things that they can is what’s really important to me,” she concludes.