Class of 2012

The young designer classes of 2012 display their fashion mettle at end-of-year shows. DEIRDRE MCQUILLANspots future stars

IMAGINE A DRESS that unravels like a festival tent and folds up for storage, manipulated by twists and turns. That’s the idea, taken from collapsible structures, behind Marie Jane Mannion’s avant garde “pop-up” garments that will make their debut in her collection at the National College of Art Design graduate fashion show at the end of this month. She is just one of the latest group of fledgling talents, 15 from NCAD and 24 from Limerick School of Art Design, who will display their trendsetting creativity on the catwalks before taking wings to gain experience in the fashion capitals of the world.

“This year’s graduates are more diverse than usual and their approach is more conceptual than trend driven. They are working with a wide range of materials from latex to leather, and manipulating fabric,” says Helen McAllister, NCAD’s Head of Fashion Textiles. Lecturer Linda Byrne says that some are really pushing boundaries. “We have everything from new technology to tailoring and some are very commercial, some not so. They are informed by the economic situation and want their collections to stand the test of time. But unlike Fine Art students they have to answer to requirements and we ask for context as well as concept,” she stresses.

The pop-up dress is only one of many intriguing ways the students have approached fundamental ideas about clothing. Blathnaid McClean, for instance, bonded white fibres onto black cloth to recreate a chiaroscuro look of falling light rays. Róisín Fallen Bailey trapped liquid latex in fabric and juxtaposed it with cotton. Aisling Connell screen-printed her own patterns into intricate shapes, while Michael Power (who will be going to the Royal College of Art) uses liquid silicone and stonewashed silk to express ideas of preservation. Notable is a colour palette largely dominated by greys, blacks and whites.

A number of students have already won prizes for their work. Suzanne Melinn, the only knitter in the group, has been shortlisted for the international Mittelmoda award in Italy, from a network of more than 600 fashion schools. Here at home, five finalists from NCAD and two from Limerick are competing for the highly coveted Persil award worth €10,000, the winner to be announced on June 6th.

When it comes to knitwear, Limerick students have the advantage of expert technical training on the specialist Shima Seiki computerised knitting machine, the only one of its kind in the country. Most of Fiona Nugent’s collection, for example, has been made on it, though the dramatic macrame piece shown here was made by hand. This year’s graduates have been all over the world on internships. Megan Burns assisted Philip Treacy with millinery for the royal wedding, while Amy Nixon worked with Sharon Wauchob in Paris, Ciara Sheridan with Erdem in London, Grace Horan with Krizia in Barcelona and Rebecca Marsdon went to India. Now most will leave for New York, London or Australia. “We have a wonderful network,” says Melinn. “There is a lot of interest in knit at the moment – at times of recession knitwear sells – and the US is looking for interns.” The college will also be setting up an incubation course for knitters called IFIL (Irish Fashion Incubation Centre Limerick), to encourage those skills.

In the meantime, sewing machines are in full throttle as the finishing touches to the collections from the new wave of Irish graduates are put in place before hitting the catwalks – in The Gallery, Clare Street, Limerick on Thursday, May 17th and in Dublin at NCAD’s Thomas Street campus on Saturday, May 26th, with shows at 3pm and 8pm.