Friday 30 January 2009

Fri 30th January: Michael Vanderham

When Professor Louise Wilson had her OBE celebratory party, friends flew in to London especially for the event (eg. Balenciaga's Alistair Carr from Paris & Zero's Maria Conejo from NYC). One of her achievements awarded by the Queen is the continued success of her ability to sniff out an abundant source of future fashion stars. So who is going to emerge from the smoky corridors of Central this season?
My blog has a newly appointed assistant Ben Fern who will be contributing to the content of my page from here on in. For his 1st report I asked him to catch up with my top tip Michael Vanderham who will be showing at the CSM MA show in February.
************** WATCH THIS SPACE******************



Apparently you use a lot of fabric manipualtion and textile techniques in your work?


I used to however now I use a lot less, now I use more textiles and use the wieghts of the fabrics to work within my designs to contrast the weights- opposites.


Which designers have you trained with?
I've only worked with Mcqueen, Three as Four (NYC) and a few others.
(I also know for fact that Michael worked a long placement with Sophia Kokosolaki too, so I think there is some modesty here)

Who can you see yourself working for in the future?
I'm not really sure I have no idea as I don't really have any plans for after MA as of yet.

Who is your ideal muse?
Well being as though my work is quite ecclectic I have many influences such as Grace Jones, which I then contrast with other less outrageous people, but not as such a muse.

I know you don't want to say much about your collection for fashion week, however could you perhaps let me in on the theme?
Well as always my looks are going to be labour intensive with lots of hand sewing and a major amount of hand finishing. There will be 10 party dresses which will all be constructed to be layered and extremely busy to look at.

Did you always see yourself going down this fashion path?
I've been doing this since I was 16 so yeah I suppose so.

And finally, do you have any tips on who to look out for from CSM MA at fashion week?

errrmmmmmmmmm yeah there's two that instantly come to mind - Laura Mackness and Chary Westberg.






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