Eight MA Fashion alumni disrupting the industry

Fashion as digital fantasy. Marcela Baltarete works with 3D modelling and animation software to create digital avatars which sit at the intersection of postgenderism and transhumanism.

How did your time at the RCA influence your practice?

RCA Fashion offered me the freedom to explore and tap into different ways of thinking about the human body way beyond traditional fashion. It exposed me to technologies such as VR – which started my fascination with the digital as a medium.

The diversity and richness of talks given by visiting lecturers coming from a huge variety of fields to discuss subjects ranging from science to art, technology, gender identity and sustainability very much accelerated the process that helped me stretch and shape my mind, as well as my creative practice.

What have you been working on since graduating?

Since graduation I've been further experimenting with my art and the direction in which I want to take my work, as well as the subjects I want to explore. I've also been fortunate to be part of several international events such as Jerusalem Design Week and the Netherlands Film Festival which allowed me to meet very exciting and creative people. I'm currently working as a freelance 3D artist as well as doing occasional lecturing, while continuing to focus on the development of my own art practice.

How do you want to change the fashion industry?

I want to challenge the future of the human body and the gender binary within the digital world. Challenging ideas such as transhumanism and postgenderism and whether the focus should be on liberating our bodies or liberating our minds, or both. On whether our bodies need adapting to better fit in our society or does society need to adapt and embrace our individual bodies and identities?

I hope that through the questions I ask within my art, I will to some extent influence the fashion industry and see it shift towards a more human-centred approach rather than garment-centred.

Fashion design without the waste. Danielle Elsener founded DECODE: a complete zero-waste design system to solve industry problems through communication, sharing and play.

What did you learn at the RCA that contributed to your success after?

The RCA taught me how to navigate getting things done in an industry that is massive and immovable. Being encouraged to push through boundaries, ask questions and always be thinking of solutions has stuck with me. This has had a very real time effect in making my vision come to fruition.

I've been working towards developing a zero waste factory for years and while at the RCA I began winning grants and getting media attention surrounding my methods. This has propelled me to open the world's first zero waste apparel design and manufacturing system that designs, patterns and manufactures zero waste garments in Brooklyn, New York.

How do you want to change the fashion industry?

The fashion industry is due for a massive wake-up call. I am disrupting the system by developing a zero waste design and manufacturing system. I have experienced pushback first-hand when proposing zero waste designs within large companies that I worked with. Despite large buy-in, I found these initiatives were often stopped in their tracks. The reason? Manufacturers were unwilling or unable to make changes to their existing workflow. This lack of flexibility has made it hard for industry decision-makers to take more sustainable actions. The unknowns of cost, time and effort required to alter existing operations makes it unreasonable to change direction quickly.

So, how do we make the industry more flexible, sustainable and impactful? Simple. We create our own system. We build our own factory that focuses on these very real problems. We not only know how to design and concept zero waste garments, but we can take you from introduction and scope all the way through business strategies, manufacturing and storytelling. The largest question mark for businesses is ‘How?’ and we’re here to show exactly that.

Circular luxury fashion rooted in regenerative materials. Aurélie Fontan is developing Mykkö, a circular plant-based leather alternative made with living fungal mycelium that’s fully renewable, carbon neutral and biodegradable.

What have you been up to since graduating?

Since graduating I have started my own design studio, Osmose Studio, and material science company focusing on circular and innovative processes involving bio-fabrication for mycelium material. My company Mykkö is part of the InnovationRCA startup incubator. We have been funded by Innovate UK and also won the London Mayor Entrepreneur's Award for this project. Since then we have worked for several brands including refurbishing the Ledbury, a Michelin star restaurant in Notting Hill, that we equipped with over 52 mycelium panels.

My RCA graduate collection was exhibited at the Taubman Museum in the US and I also decided to pivot my existing couture practice to sustainable ready-to-wear for womenswear so my work can become more accessible and make a bigger impact. I was granted the Young Innovator Award 2022 following my studio debut, and have also been working with a few charity projects on the topic of conscious fashion and primary school education.

How did your practice evolve while you were at the RCA?

The Royal College of Art exposed me to a different approach to my practice which was more entrepreneur-led and speculative. I was encouraged to refine story-telling skills, which can be very helpful when explaining a project to a wider audience, such as pitching for funds or when crafting a press release. It allowed me to become more succinct about communication and convey my ideas more clearly.

How do you want to change the fashion industry?

I want to bring more science into my industry, looking at how our ecosystems can offer solutions for our material crisis. Fashion is a complex industry that needs remodelling from the ground up, starting with materials – but also embedding better practices when it comes to recycling and end-of-life. Looking at biology is definitely one of the most promising fields we can explore in terms of materials so we can make our practice more regenerative.

Fully digitalised fashion materials. Formless is a virtual fashion accessories laboratory and design house that curates events and shifts fashion experience with immersive technologies.

What have you been up to since graduating?

We have been working on bringing Formless ideas from our time at the RCA to life, finding the balance between creative and practical sides. Alongside this, we have worked on some design projects with companies like Samsung, SHOWstudio and Atem.

What did you learn at the RCA that contributed to your success after?

To be forward-thinking – seeing the bigger picture of the industry and always bearing sustainability in mind.

How do you want to change the fashion industry?

We want to bring the latest technology and web3.0 trends to the realm of fashion, preparing consumers to make the inevitable transition from physical to virtual. Also, we want to bring the idea of less physical consumption to the market, keeping the fashion industry running but with less pollution.

Adaptivewear which prioritises aesthetic sensibilities as well as flexibility and function. Inspired by living with her grandparents, Ellen Fowles is driving the conversation about disability and fashion forward.

What are you working on at the moment and what do you have planned next?

At the moment, I'm working at a couple of London universities in research and teaching. I was delighted to return to the RCA to co-lead a project together with Anne Ferial. Our project, Fashion + Joy, is a collaboration between students from the MA Fashion programme and artists with learning disabilities, autism and other support needs from Share Community. It aims to challenge perceptions about disability in higher education and the wider fashion industry. We are currently making bespoke headwear, using adaptive tools and accessible 3D printing/scanning technologies. The project will culminate in a public exhibition and performance during Wandsworth Arts Fringe Festival.

Alongside this, I have co-founded the Adaptive Fashion Network. Together with my fellow designers and researchers, we have formed a purpose-driven collective to share knowledge and skills across education, industry and government sectors. I have also been registered in the Design Age Institute’s directory of experts in healthy ageing and inclusive design. I hope to contribute to adaptive clothing design in both the fashion industry and academia, as I believe this is where my work can be most impactful. By engaging in work in both these fields, I remain informed by theory and alert to the realities of the fashion industry, which provides me with the awareness to achieve real change.

Have any experiences from your time at the RCA stuck with you?

My MA programme included several live industry projects, and I had the opportunity to become involved with some fantastic organisations during my studies. A project with Microsoft, AI 9-5, explored how artificial intelligence could influence the future of healthcare accountability within the frontlines of the NHS. For this project, I worked with Yiming Yang, an excellent designer studying MA Information Experience Design. 

I also worked with the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design as part of AcrossRCA – a week of intense workshops outside of regularly scheduled fashion lectures. We focused on co-designing products and services with people who have learning disabilities or autism, as part of the Inclusive Futures project at the Wellcome Trust. During this project, I met Nouran Kamel, a student on the MRes Healthcare & Design programme. We have since gone on to collaborate together on other work.

Both of these experiences taught me the value that insight from different disciplines holds, and how to find commonalities in different design fields. I learnt how I could implement this collaborative approach in my own fashion practice.

How would you like to see the fashion industry evolve in the next five years?

I would love to see genuine diversity, rather than box-ticking tokenism, prioritised by the industry. We need more than palatable disability spotlit on the covers of magazines: we need disabled people at the drawing boards, in the ateliers and behind the camera lenses. The best way for clothing to become more accessible is to have disabled people designing it. How can this happen when they're excluded from the room? Drawing from lived experience is the best way to create things that are desirable and actually work. I want to use my platform to bring more disabled voices into these design houses and research institutions. The knowledge is already there, we just need to listen and learn from the expertise of the disability community. 

Grotesque couture. Crafting wearable identity clothes that are ‘beautiful but also a bit repulsive’, Fabian Kis-Juhasz’s horror-infused creations turn fairytale tropes – and femininity – on their head.

What were you doing before the RCA and what made you want to study the MA Fashion programme here?

I was doing a BA right before and didn’t really consider applying anywhere, then Ryan Houlton [MA Fashion, 2016] who was lecturing on my BA recommended me to Zowie Broach [Head of Fashion at the RCA] and the course. Upon meeting them and learning about the programme I knew it was the right fit. My BA was quite technical and the RCA gave me the space and support to develop my work on a more conceptual level. The RCA was really great at cultivating self awareness – the programme really required us to understand our references and motives.

Your work explores the grotesque alongside a kind of fantastical or fairytale element. What made you want to tie these themes together and what are some of the inspirations behind your collections?

It’s an ethos that evolved naturally for me over the years but for a while I found it hard to articulate. Discovering Italian giallo movies was when it all clicked, and I understood that overwhelming femininity combined with a gothic sensibility and horror is the intersection where most of my interests lie.

What are you working on at the moment and what's next for you?

Since graduating I have been slowly working on my own brand, trying to perfect and further evolve the ideas I came up with at the RCA. I’m currently working on my first orders for a couple of stores which is very exciting, and in the meantime I’m developing ideas for a new collection.

Menswear with meaning. Marie LUEDER envelopes wearers in empowering creations that act like armour for the twenty-first century with her casual menswear grounded in tailoring expertise.

What drew you to the MA Fashion programme at the RCA?

It was actually the only university where the combination of minds and the study of creative practice had this academic grounding too. You basically find your own way of accessing fashion design, and whether that’s designing a certain piece or developing your own fabric, you need to be driven. I wanted to be pushed to answer ‘Why do I do this?’

My parents are care workers and at the RCA I began to realise the way I design is also about how I can empower men through my garments – how I can support them in a different way to be more confident. I didn't want to create suits for the men I designed for, but I wanted to give them the same second skin feeling of a bespoke suit. So I apply this feeling to perfectly fitted ready-to-wear. I take this pattern cutting idea and apply it to garments like jeans, coats and anoraks but I engineer it in a way that the wearer feels more supported than they would normally do.

Your practice also prioritises sustainability – could you talk more about your process?

As a young brand you can have limited access to fabrics, so you start with deadstock which is already produced so in that way you don’t create more waste. But sometimes you’re limited with certain materials, especially with jersey – I have big issues with believing that jersey is sustainable and the dyeing process is also very difficult to trace. There are so many t-shirts – things people wear once, say for a stag do or a hen do. So I buy t-shirts from secondhand shops and use them as my own kind of deadstock to make new pieces.

Then with Covid-19, I was limited because I like to collaborate with people together in a room and try out patterns. I thought ‘How can I involve people and create this intimacy with my models?’ I asked them to send me some garments which they don’t use anymore then spoke to them about what they would change about those garments. So I made this transition with their mentoring, creating this new garment for my collection, and then gifted it back to them after their involvement in the project.

Are there any experiences from your time at the RCA that still resonate with you now?

I think something that I talk to my friends about, that we never forget, is that working with Zowie [Broach] was always very special. One project that we did 'Mirror Mirror’ was really a breakthrough point for a lot of people. It took you out of the system of the institution so you had to really dig deep into what you are about. There were incredible guest lecturers that Zowie invited – and not just lecturers on fashion which was so good because we design for people, not just for fashion designers, and we get inspired by life so I think this was really unique and incredible to hear from a mix of people. And then the community – that’s the most important thing, all your friends you study with, the communication you have with each other is incredible. The best tool is to talk with each other through the process of what you’re not sure about.

Designs that celebrate flesh – instead of concealing it. With her size-inclusive womenswear that accentuates the folds and curves of the feminine body, Karoline Vitto blends the sensual and experimental.

Are there any experiences from the RCA or skills that you learned that help you run your own brand today?

When I first started, I didn’t really have a clear focus of what I wanted to do yet. I knew the areas that I was interested in in terms of research, and I was always looking at the same topics – the body, feminism and the relationships that people have with their bodies across different cultures. So I knew that these were areas of interest for me, but I didn't really know how I was going to turn that into a practical outcome just yet.

We had to do a lot of presentations, talking about our work and explaining our reasoning for the work that we were doing and what inspired us. I really got to the bottom of what I wanted to do – what was it about my work that made it mine? We would also always need to be ready to answer questions and after I graduated and started to get some press around my work, that was really helpful.

The RCA really helped me to find the reason behind my work and understand what I am about as a designer. It was definitely the most solid foundation to build on that I don’t think I would have had anywhere else.

What have you been up to since graduating and what are your career highlights so far?

2020 was a year that I took to really develop the future of the brand. I wanted to take work that I did during the MA to a more commercial place, because essentially I wanted to see women wearing these pieces. During the MA I was really focused on image-making and creating something that would look beautiful. For me the next step was ‘How can the pieces tell the same story regardless of whether they are in a photo or in real life?’

In 2021 I opened my online store and really started operating as a business. Last year I was also invited to design a custom dress for [curve model] Precious Lee for the cover of Vogue Brasil so for me personally that is one of my biggest highlights, and I’ve done a few other projects with Vogue Brasil and Vogue Portugal.

How do you think the industry can be more inclusive pertaining to body image?

The process has to be 360 degrees. What I see very often is brands putting on the catwalk maybe two curve models and suddenly everybody thinks this brand is inclusive. For me that’s tokenism – it’s a marketing decision.

For the whole industry to become more inclusive, the whole system needs to shift. We need to have more access to the factories that fabricate these pieces, and they need to be prepared to work with larger sizes. Even when you think about the mills, the width of the fabric is generally 140 centimetres wide and that’s not enough – if I’m making a size 28 trouser, I would need double the fabric than for a size 12 because of the size of the hip, the distance of the crotch, to have a good fit that sits nicely on the body.

At the end of the day it doesn't matter if my brand is up to a size 28 if when I'm negotiating with a buyer, they only want to buy a small, medium and large. There's still a lot of opportunity for growth in all areas. So for me, what's next is thinking not only about relying on the brand and designer for this work, but really thinking about the whole process.