This kaleidoscopic love story celebrates the ‘everyday beauty and strength of Black existence’, and features community leaders, steelband players, matriarchs, poets and political activists. With Ahluwalia’s collection subtly woven throughout, this is part documentary, and part feature.

 

Ahluwalia

Recently launched by British designer Priya Ahluwalia, her namesake brand creates vibrant, forward-looking menswear that pays tribute to her family’s Nigerian and Indian heritage, with a touch of nostalgia for her 90s childhood in south London.

Employing 3D-scanning techniques, 12 models take on the roles of video-game avatars in a virtual world created in collaboration with designer Hillary Taymour. As the game players explore their environment and plant virtual trees, we are encouraged to contemplate notions of change, growth and community.

 

Collina Strada

Founded by American designer Hillary Taymour, New York-based Collina Strada is both a womenswear brand and platform for climate awareness, change and self-expression, using repurposed textiles, psychedelic prints and sustainable practices.

This short poetic fable tells the story of a rabbit with a green gem in place of an eye, who lives in a small house with a sparrow, pangolin and a carp. They are obsessed with the rabbit in their own ways; one day, a new season of migration approaches, and they each carry their gifts for the rabbit and begin their journey.

 

Rui

Founded by Chinese designer Rui Zhou in 2019, Rui is a ready-to-wear label for men and women that both amplifies and reveals the body. Inspired by ‘poetic elegance between skin and garment’, Rui’s soft and form-fitting designs celebrate the beauty of imperfection.

Narrative and character are upended in this surreal whirl through the parking garages, gas stations and industrial locations of east London, as models appear and reappear dressed in Gui Rosa looks throughout a fractured storyline of quickfire cinematic scenes. 

 

Gui Rosa

Graduating from Central Saint Martins with a master’s degree in 2020, Gui Rosa has since poured his life experience into his designs, drawing on inspiration from his own liberal upbringing in Portugal, and the brighter and more chaotic corners of pop culture.

Inspired by Hans Eijkelboom’s 1978 work 'The Ideal Man', in which the artist interviewed a series of women about their fantasy partner before transforming himself into their likeness, we encounter eight different men as they dress in Bianca Saunders’s designs and explore notions of the ‘perfect man’.

 

Bianca Saunders

Born and based in London, Bianca Saunders is a menswear designer focusing on black male identities, proposing an aesthetic that pushes the boundaries of construction and gender, while challenging society's dominant notions of hypermasculinity.

An animated film inspired by the worlds of gaming and simulated fight matches that questions reality.

 

Mowalola

Following her debut at London Collections: Men’s SS18, Nigeria-born Mowalola Ogunlesi has made a name for herself through provocative designs that explore gender and social identity, all inspired by the bold aesthetics of Nigerian and London youth culture.

Organised around the four elements of earth, air, fire and water, this short, dialogue-free documentary about upcycling and sustainability contains moments of the surreal, including flying garments by Rave Review, and gentle musing on the nature of Swedishness.

 

Rave Review

Stockholm-based label Rave Review was founded by Swedish duo Josephine Bergqvist and Livia Schück, debuting at Paris Fashion Week for SS 2018. Their embrace of upcycling, playful textiles such as blankets, and environmentally-friendly processes swiftly gained them both fans and acclaim.

Featuring the creations of independent designer Jezabelle Cormio, Franchetti and Sapeha evoke the joy of communal creativity. The title character is driven from her taxi by a bickering couple, and finds solace in Rome’s piano bars, bursting into joyful song with her new-found companions.

 

Cormio

Taking a whimsical approach to craft and tradition, Cormio draws on the tensions between city and countryside. Jezabelle Cormio, who graduated from the prestigious Royal Academy of Antwerp in 2013, founded the Milan-based womenswear label in 2019 and inaugurated her first collection in a village festival in the Lombardian town of Seveso. The Tyrolese-Austrian world is a strong influence on her designs.

A romantic vision of Britain comes to life in this abstract short, juxtaposing evocative archive footage with documentation of this season’s looks from independent London label Stefan Cooke.

 

Stefan Cooke

Taking a forward-thinking approach to British heritage design with a subtly subversive approach to textile manipulation, London-based menswear label Stefan Cooke was founded in 2017 by Stefan Cooke and Jake Burt, both graduates of Central Saint Martins.

In a deserted mansion, an eclectic cast of characters come together in a celebration of London’s vibrant youth culture while wearing JordanLuca designs. Inspired by the Byron poem 'The Darkness' about 1816’s infamous ‘year of no summer’, Clinch and his designer collaborators imagine a world where darkness becomes light.

 

JordanLuca

Founded by Jordan Bowen and Luca Marchetto in 2018, this independent brand combines Italian tradition with British creativity, resulting in a spirited and iconoclastic take on menswear that brings an element of chaos to quality craftsmanship.

 

Part of an ongoing multi-medium project visualising personal traumas, experiences, studies, and identities, Campbell tells stories of self-understanding and release. Drawing on elements of spirituality, Black history and Afro-Futurism, her life is translated into dialogue-free vignettes left open to our interpretation.

 

Shanel Campbell

Multidisciplinary artist and designer Shanel Campbell is a Bronx-born, NYC-based queer first-generation Black woman with Caribbean lineage. In 2018, she held her first independent fashion exhibition, showing custom garments created for a number of noted artists, educators and actors.

 

Driven by a desire to create ‘clothing for adventurers’, designer Viguier and director Rixon envision a fellowship on a sacred quest. Guided by ‘prophetic imperative’ and yearning for the spirituality they see as lacking in the modern world, our heroes set out in search of transcendence.

 

Boramy Viguier

This French-Cambodian designer founded his eponymous label in 2018, at the age of 28. Combining esoteric symbolism with a utilitarian aesthetic, his non-traditional, minimalist garments have a cult-like, mystical quality.

 

A young woman returns to the countryside for her grandmother’s birthday. She is unhappy but by the end remembers everything she loved about the village. Set in designer Yueqi Qi’s hometown, Kaiping, this is a deeply personal story about the place where she spent her formative years.

 

Yueqi Qi

Based in Guangzhou, China, Yueqi Qi is a fashion and jewellery designer with a love for the skills of couture. Using beads as a fabric, she draws on her heritage and aims to bring traditional Chinese craft techniques to the international stage.

A trailer for a video game that doesn’t exist. As the characters come to realise there is no end product, they start to question their own existence as avatars within ‘The Maul’, a post-apocalyptic virtual world of Wrighton’s creation that he has returned to throughout his career.

 

Gareth Wrighton

London-based designer Gareth Wrighton showed for the first time with London East in 2019, where he launched his own knitwear brand. Known for his handmade one-offs that have appeared on magazine covers, he is also a multidisciplinary artist and video game designer.

 

Scary monsters invade the colourful and dreamlike world of Charles de Vilmorin and his offbeat designs, in this short video inspired by 1980s horror films. As he sketches the grotesque creatures of his nightmares, they come to life and consume him.

 

Charles de Vilmorin

This young French womenswear and menswear designer combines an exuberant vision, experimental approach to embroidery and fabric, and a carefree and agnostic approach to gender, as embodied in his cult-favourite quilted jackets.