LONDON — Central Saint Martins’ Reset Show, previously called the White Show, is an annual rite of passage for first-year fashion design students.
In three weeks, freshers create a single garment out of entirely white Ultrasuede fabric. The final product is paraded down a runway at a show attended by their professors, members of the press and CSM alums. That’s not to mention the most important critics of all: their classmates, who pack the school’s crisscross of corridors and watch from their perches above.
Set against a backdrop of pro-Palestine demonstrations that protested against sponsor L’Oréal and featuring runway photographers stuffed in cages, this year’s show was a barometer of how current events are translating to students’ work.
Stylianos Kamperis’ Reset Show look.
Courtesy of Tanvi Hoffmann / Rina Choi / Shenell Wellington
“Much like other art fields, fashion design can be used to make a commentary on life, politics, personal struggles,” said first-year student Stylianos Kamperis. “Unlike those other fields though, fashion design, through the use of form, texture, color and fit, interacts with the human body, it is part of our everyday life.”
Kamperis’ look toyed with the stifling feeling of restriction. A top, striped with hand-embroidered appliqué strips of fabric, nodded to Greek Orthodox chitons, while sleeves bound the arms à la Jesus’ crucifixion.
A close up of Gannon Falconer’s Reset Show look.
Courtesy of Gannon Falconer
Inspired by blaxploitation films from the ‘70s like “Dolemite,” “Foxy Brown” and “Coffy,” Gannon Falconer’s sharply tailored trenchcoat was feathered with faux dollar bills.
“I was really into the idea of excess and superfluous displays of wealth and status,” he said, adding, “I looked a lot into the culture of pimps and, at the time, what the pinnacle of Black wealth looked like.”
Milo Leep’s Reset Show look.
Courtesy of Milo Leep.
Milo Leep’s dress whirled down the runway, its paneled skirt inspired by hunting for sea glass and stacking stones on pebble beaches. But for Leep, working with Ultrasuede was as important as any reference.
“For example, when cut, [Ultrasuede] does not fray; this was an opportunity to play around with how to use that raw hem as a design aspect. Materials inform and inspire my work just as much, if not more, than research; this was a chance to explore that,” Leep explained.
Paolo Bensimon’s Reset Show look.
Courtesy of Tanvi Hoffmann / Rina Choi / Shenell Wellington
Ancient Egyptian beliefs and rituals surrounding the afterlife informed Paolo Bensimon’s work. The four-piece outfits echoed traditional multilayered funerary garments, layers referencing sarcophagi, Henry Moore sculptures and a fitted bodice inspired by the mummification process.
Roosting on the model’s head was a headpiece in the shape of an ibis, which Bensimon said was inspired by both the Vulture crown and the god Thoth.
