Trad Future

I misplaced time during June-July when the student shows were going on.  This lost curiously coincided with a bout of post-holiday blues when I got back from Tokyo.  Funny that.  I have no real excuse therefore of the scant coverage of fashion graduates here.  Feel free to crucify me later when the number of gems start emerging and they tut at me for not giving them a lick of time.  Amelia's Magazine and their exhaustive round-ups do a fine job of covering the shows with the added bonus of having her choice of fashion illustrators interpreting the graduate looks.  

From their best picks of the MA textiles graduates at the Royal College of Art, two stood out as people that sorely need a collaborative outlet for their skills STAT.  Thorunn Arnadottir based her project around the now ubiquitous QR code, juxtaposing digital with the analogue as her QR codes are rendered in African-inspired beading.  QR codes actually feel like a retro mode of technology, sticking out like 60s imagined UFOs, on posters, in books and more recently on my TV screen as programmes like The Good Cook pounce you with the QR action so you can scan the recipes.  I suspect the QR code will go the way of mini disc format, over and redundant before before we feel their benefits.

Whatever my gripes with QR, I can't help but be charmed by Arnadottir's beaded versions of the blasted things.  She cleverly fished out the word 'tribal' from our numerous constructed identities on online social media and reconnected it with African traditional beadcraft.  

She created a few pieces including a necklace, a pair of show glasses (the type you can't actually see out of) as well as a dress for Icelandic pop stop Kali in Steed Lord.  The codes actually function properly as the codes on the dress scan to link up to promotional material for the band and the glasses can be scanned to link to give to charity.  Minority Report type scans don't seem so far away afterall and I'd love to see Arnadottir team up with a house or designer in a catwalk/presentation installation that is integrated with mobile devices.  Some sort of amazing film popping up on people's phones/iPad screens perhaps?  Different codes resulting in an MP3 download of the show soundtrack?  I'll let clever agencies and marketing people work it out.  Let's just get Arnadottir involved yarsh?

Another RCA textiles MA graduate who I think could sorely use with collaboration is Emma Lundgren whose work I was aware of back in 2009 when she appeared on Dazed Digital in this memorable online series of pictures.  Back then, she had already began to establish her obsession of mixing folkloric with futuristic.  Her Swedish heritage has fused with her East London environment and design symbols such as lego, cross-stich, dalahorses are amped up into almost unrecognisable formations using bright colours and unusual materials.   

Now she has graduated and she her final project Samilight, again draws from her Scandinvian roots – specifically the Sami costume decoration, the mesmerising Northern Lights and the Esrange Space Centre in Lapland.  Patterns from traditional Sami costume again are amplified with colour and mixed in with a host of synethic materials so that you can barely see the Sami origins and instead you have a reconfigured take on familiar motifs.  

Lundgren's work could definitely evolve into a collection in itself with the help of some smart pattern cutters but I also see it blossoming in home textiles, accessories or graphic design.  According to this blog, Lundgren is also using recycled plastics in her work, which is an eco bonus.  Again hopefully collaborators are at the ready.