Recent times have led us to become adaptable and resourceful to enhance our creativity, and that is exactly how LCF and LCC students have been working. This cross-college initiative is a great example of how creatives have come together to build their final collections and projects with the accompanying eyes of others from different disciplines. We found out how the students found this collaborative experience albeit in a virtual world.
Linda Chan and Kelly Chong
BA (Hons) Fashion Design and Development and BA (Hons) Fashion Jewellery
'The psychological state during a post-truth era underpins our work. All media can be misleading, misunderstood and miss-interpreted. To live authentically one must stand by their own truth.'
What does collaboration mean to you?
L: To me collaboration is an opportunity to learn things from different professional fields, to work with people from other disciplines, giving out our strength and engage with each other to achieve the project goals and expand our experience field, creating more possibilities.
K: Collaboration is cooperating to make a new piece of art. It becomes a new angle to express the art we want. Innovation is the core meaning of collaborating.
How did you find collaborating with different disciplines?
L: Working with different disciplines helped me realised and engage in new skills and techniques that I am not familiar with, also enhancing my problem solving and communication skills, that led us to a deeper understanding and appreciation of each other's work.
What will you/have you learnt from this time?
L: Creativity can be present in a very diverse way, yet we can still create something interesting with the limited materials and resources we have. Don’t limit yourself with your usual comfortable working style. Adapt, break the boundaries and learn new skills that make you motivated and be excited with the possibilities that you create.
Describe your projects mantra in one sentence
K: See 360° and find your own value in this distorted world.
@every_kind_of_way_ Garments by @_____lost_and_found_____ Jewellery by @kelluv.jew Video by @claudia_sin
Emi Tanimura
BA (Hons) Fashion Design & Development and MA Graphic Branding and Identity at LCC
This project, entitled ‘Survivalist’, was inspired through challenging times in my own personal life, leading me to create ultra-functional, transformable garments that adapt in changing environments.
It is important for me to utilise fashion as a way to address key social issues within the homeless and displaced community. My work aims to change the perception of functional stylish fashion, into a vehicle that can positively impact lives.
How did you find collaborating with different disciplines?
I believe we can work and learn from each other in a collaboration, as each team member is able to bring a different skill to the table. I found collaborating with LCC students particularly insightful, as they have skills in certain areas we don't learn at LCF. They were able to take the concept of my collection and approach the project from a branding perspective, to appropriately merge our creative visions together.
Given the current times, how would you say you have adapted your ways of working?
As campuses have all closed due to the pandemic, we were not able to take professional photos in a studio this year. I therefore ended up making some of my final garments from home, and took the photos/videos using my iPhone on my roof terrace, using the sky as the background.
What will you/have you learnt from this time?
I've learnt how to be more adaptable and utilise the things around me to push my creativity to its full potential.
Garments & Videography by @tanimuraemi Typography & Branding by @moniqueyoungyuen @rosa.josephine @vanillawild @anasofiagv
Ekaterina Kondrateva
BA (Hons) Fashion Design and Development
What does collaboration mean to you?
Collaboration is a flow, and honest interchange. It is a fluidity of various ideas and a vast field of discrete values that have a chance to merge and evolve through a dialogue.
Given the current times, how would you say you have adapted your ways of working?
It was quite hard to adjust as the situation been changing so rapidly. We didn't have time to exchange any physical materials that we worked on through out the year to have a chance to intertwine our works materially, as we have planned from the beginning. It was quite hard to accept. However, after some time of reappropriating our practices, the ways we document it, we started to reconsider the meaning of physicality and found new ways to recreate dimensions inside a digital space.
What will you/have you learnt from this time?
One of the major thing is flexibility. It was a hard time for everyone to adapt to a new set of resources, the ones we have in our houses. Accept the lack of some and search for the path around it, both mentally and practically.
Fashion and Art Direction by @katya.kondrat Sculptures by @wemily_sculpture Poster by @poghosmejia
Romain Potier and Florian
BA (Hons) Fashion Styling and Production, BA (Hons) Fashion Design and Development and MA Footwear
We are all different but at the same time, all connected. Just not in the same reality.
What does collaboration mean to you?
Collaboration is acknowledging that you can’t always do everything by yourself and accepting that your project won’t have the same result of only one artistry but it can create something much bigger, more impactful with a team.
How did you find collaborating with different disciplines?
It is like building bridges between universes that you sometimes thought could not be connected. We learn from our differences and adapt our languages to understand each other
Given the current times, how would you say you have adapted your ways of working?
Luckily when we started the project, all three collaborators were already working from different locations around the world.
The main idea behind our project was to create a new standard where digital garments become the norm, so working together during the pandemic felt like the transition that most people had to go through was already behind us.
Footwear Design and animations by @antonio_arocho Fashion design and motion graphics by @iremain__ Styling, Production and Music by @zoccoletta_ufficiale
Jack Hargreaves and Zhiwei Hong
BA (Hons) Fashion Textiles: Knitwear and BA (Hons) Fashion Design and Development
How did you find collaborating with different disciplines?
The experience gave a refreshing perspective on knitwear, and I learnt how different the mindset could be for people from different courses inside design realm.
Given the current times, how would you say you have adapted your ways of working?
My way of working has became more modular. Instead of making a finished piece, I am now making small samples and ribs, to be optimised later digitally to simulate outcome.
What will you/have you learnt from this time?
Never trust the internet and digital tools are magical.
All co-designed by @jackhargreaves and @moimoto
Abbie Taskis and Lisa Keane
BA (Hons) Fashion Textiles: Embroidery and BA (Hons) Fashion Textiles: Print
The debut collection embraces a multidisciplinary, duality approach to creation. These are not just sculptures to wear but works of art to see. A challenge of tradition with a new textile perspective, fusing the disciplines of art and fashion.
What does collaboration mean to you?
L: In the current climate and world we live in it is impossible to achieve everything alone. For my own individual growth it only made sense for me to collaborate with another textile designer and learn, share and think to push each others ideas forward. Maintaining a constant development and interaction of a vision.
How did you find collaborating with different disciplines?
A: Collaborating with another textiles student has been rewarding, as our concepts and styles are similar but different, and we were able to always produce fabrics and design ideas that we could agree on and were excited about.
Given the current times, how would you say you have adapted your ways of working?
A: Unfortunately we lost our graphics and branding students, meaning that we had to produce many assets ourselves. We had to think extra creatively about how we could turn a very immersive, sculptural project into a short film, and tried and tested so many approaches. As a duo who thrive off being in the studio and working physically and energetically, this situation has taught us how to use the resources we have, to present our message in alternative ways.
What will you/have you learnt from this time?
L: Anything can change, adapt to the situation and to stay open-minded while staying true to my own personal values.
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