Twenty graduating MA Fashion students unveiled their collections lastnight for #MAFCSM23. One student was named the winner of the L’Oréal Professionnel Creative Award and two were awarded the Canada Goose HUMANATURE award for responsible design.
Judged by Ib Kamara, Editor-in-Chief Dazed and Art & Image Director Off-White™, the L’Oréal Professionnel Creative Award went to MA Fashion Menswear student Yaku Stapleton, whose collection is called The impossible Family Reunion in RPG Space. Chie Kaya, MA Fashion Womenswear, and Alessandro Tondolo, MA Fashion Menswear were jointly awarded the HUMANATURE Award for responsible design for work in partnership with Canada Goose.
"Research into the Afro-Futurism movement opened the opportunity to introspect my own past and investigate how fantasy, online role-player games, and my previous research in perception, scale, and human form can combine. I drafted character designs based on my family and then sought to realize these characters in garments, finding a balance between fashion and costume design.
Yaku Stapleton
On winning the L'Oreal Award, Yaku said:
"I am still lost for worlds and I think it will be a while before I feel back on earth. I already felt on cloud nine for producing a collection I was proud of and being given the opportunity to share it with others. So being awarded the L'oreal prize felt completely surreal. I am beyond grateful and super excited for what's to come."
Writing in Vogue, Sarah Mower said:
"To watch a Central Saint Martins MA graduation show is to dip a thermometer into a cauldron of the imaginations, tastes, and beliefs that are firing the young people who will soon be unleashed on fashion. You don’t go there, either as an audience member, or as a prospective student, expecting nice. There are no classes, academic dissertations, or business studies on the curriculum. Instead, each cohort is confronted with a more nebulously challenging form of training: being urged to be risk takers, go deep into their instincts and identities, to be obsessive about research and technique."
The work of all 50 MA Fashion 2023 graduating students is celebrated in a fashion film, MA Fashion Turn to the Left, by Liam Leslie, which premiered after the show and all of the work has been photographed for a Lookbook on SHOWStudio.
Yaku Stapleton, MA Fashion, Menswear
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Yaku Stapleton, MA Fashion 2023. Photo Chris Moore
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Yaku Stapleton, MA Fashion, Menswear. Photo Chris Moore
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Yaku Stapleton, MA Fashion, Menswear. Photo Chris Moore
Kaya Chie, MA Fashion Womenswear and Alessandro Tondolo, MA Fashion Menswear
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Chie Kaya, MA Fashion Womenswear, Photo Chris Moore
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Chie Kaya, MA Fashion Womenswear. Photo Chris Moore
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Alessandro Tondolo, MA Fashion Menswear. Photo Chris Moore
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Alessandro Tondolo, MA Fashion, Menswear. Photo: Chris Moore
Kaya Chie's "Heirloom" is a reinterpretation of a modern-living effortless wardrobe brought to reality with a lifelong commitment to dressing-undressing well. The collection captures how working women purchase signature clothing items from men's and women's existing wardrobes and wear them by alternating, deconstructing, and juxtaposing their structures as a proposition to daily and occasional wear.
Alessandro Tondolo's Cohaeresco, which translates from Latin to growing together, aims to highlight the dissonance between humans and nature and the differences and distances between individuals.
