Whilst some are feeling the post-festival blues and hangovers, Chloe Baines is feeling her most creative and is transforming disused tents into a new collection that promotes sustainability.

For London College of Fashion student, Luke Neil, punk is a feeling. And challenging the alienation experienced among so many LGBTQ+ creatives, his latest collection, Punk Puff, has been designed to make you “feel like a grunge god.”

For Cici Zhang, fashion is a form of the most personal self-expression. And for her graduate collection, she visualised a spiritual world in which Mother Nature lent a hand to form the flowering, organic shapes that came to symbolise her inner self.

Turning embarrassing moments into the next fashion thing, Central Saint Martins designer Zixuan Guo’s ethos of always seeing the silver linings in life makes for an unforgettable – and rather funny - final collection.

The idea of digital distortion has never been more prevalent than in 2020, a year plagued by misinformation and fake news. For FIT student Yitao Li, she channelled that distortion into her graduate collection of misshapen, multi-coloured garments.

Drawing inspiration from the elements and his favourite childhood animation, Oscar Ouyang’s gutsy final collection, Wind, Current, Flow, uses knitwear to inform his futuristic world.

Graduating from the Royal College of Art, Dimitris Karagiannakis is using fashion to explore “notions of womanhood and femininity, transness, and the body,” drawing inspiration from Greek mythology and spiders to create a metamorphic design.

To LCF grad, Saule Gradeckaite, fashion is her way of expressing creative subjectivity towards an objective environment. Inspired by a Lithuanian cop show, her graduate collection challenged the critical gaze towards East European Hooligans (aka ‘gopniks’).

For his graduate collection, London College of Fashion student Daniel Vass went into full-blown clownery mode, and in the age of Boris and Trump, doesn’t it just seem fitting?

Kuan-Chien Chiang is the Taiwanese fashion designer coming out of the closet with a new bootylicious collection that celebrates gay sex in all its glory.

Graduating with a collection of female flora, Arianne Scott is the Central Saint Martins final year student using the nostalgia for another’s past to influence her garment design.

Celine Kwan is the Central Saint Martins graduate combining furniture and fashion to create her own living room utopia with “garments that look beautiful while being worn and can also be admired [when] taken off.”

Inspired by the masculine figures in his life, Kadeem Lamorell is the Parsons graduate using knitwear to understand “why masculinity is such a deeply held and important concept” in the African-American and Caribbean communities he grew up in.

Diverging from a science degree, Justine Janot switched to fashion to be able to “create characters and environments from a more 3D point of view.” Her graduate collection is the antithesis of that, combining traditional making practices with digital design in a collection of hybrid feminine silhouettes set against the backdrop of a hostile, dystopia.

With sustainable design a philosophy that runs throughout his brand DNA, Joshua James Small is the “working class gay man and self-confessed nature boy” on a mission to change the way we think about fashion consumption.

After graduating Aalto University, knit designer Juha Vehmaanperä began to unfurl masculine notions through texture; using soft yarns to shatter burly stereotypes in menswear – proving that outward gender does not always define the inner self.

From a BTEC in fashion to Central Saint Martins and beyond, Florence Grellier reflects on her journey as we talk all things full-of-food bellies, guilty pleasures and fashion misconceptions.

As the brand launches its new range, we delve deeper into NiiHai’s ‘new take on femininity’ and the designers duty to constantly evolve in the ever-changing world of fashion.

From selling hand-embroidered t-shirts to starring in Ukraine’s ‘Project Runway’, Liza is the neo-punk designer and founder of Zvoli, and is using her new capsule collection to represent the burnout experienced by artists in the fashion industry. 

Designing clothes for anyone who’s happy to wear a bit of fluff (in delightful shades of lilac, slimy lime and candy apple red no less), Stephanie Uhart is the CSM grad making self-proclaimed ‘wearable soft sculptures’ inspired by the emotional baggage we carry around.