Brilliant Colour and Bold Forms at London's Graduate Fashion Week

Naomi Lobley's collection of sculptural chunky knits at her catwalk show for De Monfort University

At this year's Graduate Design Week the world's best new fashion designers presented exciting collections to thrilled audiences. Design & Art Magazine's fashion correspondent Limor Helfgott files a special report from London.

THE annual high-octane fashion week in June for graduates of the world's best design universities is an opportunity to see the future of fashion in the making. Considered the creative event to find young innovative designers, it was the starting place for many talented fashion stars such as Stella McCartney, Christopher Bailey and Karen Milan.

This year's shows brought together more than 1000 graduates from 40 establishments in the United Kingdom. There were collections from 16 colleges and universities from around the globe including the United States, Turkey, Japan, Italy, Denmark and Israel. The designers presented their work in catwalk shows with a dynamic and international mix of models. The winner of the best international collection was Angus Chiang of Taiwan's Shih Chien University. He presented psychedelic futuristic spacemen designs full of eye-popping colour. The fashion schools who stood out among a talented crowd were De Montfort and the University Of East London.

The UEL and De Montfort University both had designers who presented work that was full of originality and verve. It will be interesting to see how they progress in the fashion industry. The De Montforts students' catwalk showed a mix of contemporary ideas that shone through their collections. The university takes pride in offering an inspiring environment for creation and teaching the students to be visually literate and have a strong grasp of technical know-how to become confident fashion designers. Below are the collections that stood out by individual designers.

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Grace Cook created a feminine collection of sheer panels and tassels at the De Montfort University show.

Full of eye-popping colour Charlotte Mathews' show (below) had an unusual mixture of textiles, patterns and detailing. The collection was rebellious with psychedelic prints and outsize shapes that recalled the phosphorescent colours of the 1990s. Accessories included a boom box on the shoulder or as a bag and headphones to go with a Walkman in hand ~ all created for the rave clubbing crowd.

Charlotte Mathews' confident and bold collection with a retro 1990s aesthetic using bright colour and generous silhouettes.

A boom-box makes a capacious handbag at Charlotte Mathew's collection

Presenting a light-hearted collection, Jade Wainright's designs were full of layers, bright colours and mixed floral fabrics and patterns. She presented a kimono-shaped jacket, a jumpsuit accessorised with large jewels in sequins, metallic embellishments and knitted bags.

Jade Wainright's layers of colour, pattern and different fabrics created a feminine look.

Showing the the most wacky womenswear collection, Kelly Frost playfully took the current trend for cat motifs to another level. Synthetic furs and patterns such as giant polka dots and plaid was all put together in a juxtaposition of colour and texture. The dominant colours were bubblegum pink and neon yellow in socks, shoes and jelly sandals. This collection symbolised a daring, non-conformist kind of girl with love for some extra attention.

 Kelly Frost's collection was full of contrasting textures and hues with cat motifs

Kim Philips collection was selected to be presented on the catwalk showing the best of the shows on Graduate Fashion Week’s last day. Philips designed a collection that works well for the British weather ~ especially for wet summers. There were floral Macs, big bulky rain jackets, jelly boots, a bomber jacket with a 3D bulldog face on the back and pom-pom ears headgear. The strangest pieces were the check nose masks that covered some of models faces.

Kim Philip's zany collection of winter knits and puffy, shiny jackets embossed with floral motifs.

Inspired by farm life, Elizabeth Arthur’s collection was quite rare as fashion and rural pursuits are often mutually exclusive enterprises. But her technical abilities made the difference in this collection and featured china-pink and azulejo-type prints. The garments looked like they were made out of different pieces but were in fact cut as a one piece of garment.

Inspired by pink porcelain china and farm wear, Elizabeth Arthur created an upbeat and fun show

In the knitwear section, Naomi Lobley’s stunning collection of chunky fringe knits used mohair and crochet in a palette of mute colors, crafted with perfectly-placed holes and occasionally touched by a patch of vibrant neon in light blue or yellow. Each one of the pieces fabrics and patterns was presented in a bold way and created the perfect ending for the De Montfort catwalk.

Naomi Lobley's bulbous cream knitwear accessorised with bold, neon jewellery

Naomi Lobley's flamboyant knitwear combined with a lime-green and blue cellulose skirt.

The University of East London opened the third day of Graduation Fashion Week in style with a catwalk that was both original and inspiring. The students proved they have good technique and great vision. This school's show was highly praised by excited bloggers and certainly raised the level for the rest of the universities showing that day. All seventeen collections by the talented students proved why this school has created a name for itself and is considered to be a manufacturer of  forward-looking and  innovative fashion. The outstanding collections are described below:

A palette of pastel blues and pinks gave Jazz Gina Brar's collection  a soft 18th Century look with voluminous hemlines creating dramatic silhouettes. Looking like delicate pieces of art, the designs included ruffles, pleats and embroidery of tiny details.

The pastels and voluminous skirts by Jazz Gina Brar

Jazz Gina Brar was inspired by the 18th Century for her graduate colllectiion

Marietta Kalvi presented an outstanding collection combining a few of the hottest trends of the moment: tailored jackets, playful midi skirts teamed with sheer tops creating a casual and effortless sense of style. An interesting twist was the use of red together with neutral colors making a particularly feminine look offset the model's anarchic hair cuts.

An intricate pattern on pale silky blouses offset brilliant red skirts and vests at Marietta Kalvi's show

The aristocratic and elegant collection by Rochelle Mullings was inspired by a dark period in London when Jack the Ripper dominated the headlines in the late 19th Century. The designs were a creative interpretation of Victorian fashion. The designer mixed ruffles at the waistline and a voluminous hemline with trousers and layers of colour. Deep red, brown, mustard yellow and gray symbolised the dim and foggy hues of a soot-filled London.

Dark and gothic 19th Century tales inspired  Rochelle Mulling collection and belies their elegant cut and rich colour.

Brilliant colour enlivened Elizabeth Harrison’s collection with a vibrant palette of bright yellow, blue and red. Tailored yet feminine silhouettes with a laid back attitude, trousers and skirts with special cuts and combination of fabrics made the designs appear fresh and full of energy.

Clashing colours that work together at Elizabeth Harrison's show enhanced by sharp hair and make-up that completed the look.

During the menswear shows, Charles Chambers' collection attracted attention. Presenting cycling gear with chic, he was inspired by the biking community. Traditional British tailoring combined with sportswear and by using layers of jeans and shorts over leggings, Chambers' added a cool edge. Three quarter trousers, biker’s gloves and bags, all created an urban sporty style. The look was accessorised with a bike – that was carried onto the catwalk by the models and used in the show.

Charles Chambers brought the bike and its fashions to this year's catwalk at Graduate Fashion Week while Joel Bostock created a sporty and modern collection (below).

Inspired by shadows and trees, Fracesca Holgado's collection for the University of East London.

Jamie MacKinnon's menswear collection was sophisticated and full of rich textures

Mackinnon proved again this season that black is the new black.

Scintillating colour at the Kirdandeep Bassan collection at Northampton University

British Artist Thomas Houseago's New Exhibition Opens in Rome

Thomas Houseago sketching at his studio in Los Angeles surrounded by art works in progress. The building houses drawing and sculpture studios plus offices where the artist employs 20 staff. Photograph by Spencer Lowell

Taking the art world by storm, LA-based British artist Thomas Houseago creates hulking sculptures in plaster, hemp, iron and bronze. Inspired by African art and Modern masters from Rodin to Picasso, the figurative sculptures are full of brute emotive power. Houseago's new exhibition Roman Figures opens in Rome at the Gagosian Gallery, reports Jeanne-Marie Cilento

A few minutes before the end of the opening of the new Thomas Houseago exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery, the red-haired artist bounds up the stairs to be immediately surrounded by a scrum of waiting journalists and Roman VIPs (pronounced like “zips” in Italian). It takes Houseago ten minutes to glad-hand the crowd in the gallery’s vestibule before he begins to look flustered by the people pressing around him and murmurs, “Where can I get a drink in this place?”

Walking up the hill of Via Francesco Crispi you can see the gallery's imposing neo-classical facade rising splendidly above the street. Despite its massive fluted columns, the rich Art Deco iconography of the building owes more to New York than to the classical ruins of the Eternal City. A suitable base for the first of Larry Gagosian’s galleries to open in Europe after his successful New York and London ventures. Built in 1921, the Rome gallery was originally a bank and was redesigned by architect Firouz Galdo with Caruso St John in 2007, transforming the classical space into a state-of-the-art contemporary gallery.

At the Roman Figures opening, Thomas Houseago is eventually swept into the great oval space of the main gallery on a river of people dressed in the kind of artistically odd clothes the conservative Romans habitually avoid. The artist is confronted by his massive reclining sculpture that dominates the space. The dynamic curve of the enormous ovoid room embraces the sculptural plaster heads hung along the walls looking like mammoth sculls, forming a macabre classical chorus to the sculpture at the centre of the room.

The giant reclining form recalls both the Dying Gaul in the Capitoline Museums and the rough musculature of Michelangelo's  rippling sculptures. Cast in plaster and hemp from a clay form, inside the figure’s iron supports are visible. While the sculpture looks smooth and finished from one side, walking around to the other you see clearly the crude armature. Called Reclining Figure (For Rome) the headless body rests prone on a plywood plinth, its surfaces visibly ruffled and smoothed by the artist’s hands and feet. “I am fascinated by the act of making art," says Houseago. "And in a broad sense, by how an artist responds to the world. I want to get rid of the readymade and figure out how I react to the world."

Apart from the large-scale sculpture Reclining Figure, the Roman Figures exhibition includes seven sculpted masks plus Walking Boy on Plinth, all done in 2013. The Roman Masks build upon the Western modernist interest in spiritually charged tribal objects from Africa and the South Pacific. Crafted from clay, cast into plaster and hemp, and reinforced with iron armatures, the skull-like reliefs have an abstract, expressive power.

As an artist, Houseago wrests new vitality from the classical figure and engages in a dialogue with the past, retracing the history of figurative sculpture through his own contemporary experience. He draws upon classical mythology, tribal art, Hanna-Barbera cartoons, Italian Mannerism as well as science fiction figures like Darth Vader. The churning surfaces of his sculptures are from jagged cuts and from the artist using his hands and feet to create his works. Houseago sometimes includes paper drawings as part of the sculpture. Powerful and emotive, the figures feel both ancient and modern and embody the existential trauma of everyday life.

Houseago explained to Design & Art Magazine that the Rome sculptures grew out of a difficult time in his life.  He certainly had a very challenging start as a young boy and student in Yorkshire but has had an extraordinarily fast-track career to success in the last ten years. Brought up in a working-class family in Leeds, Houseago left for London at 19 years old to attend Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design. Later he studied at De Ateliers in Amsterdam where he met artist Matthew Monahan and his future wife, painter Amy Bessone.

A decade ago he was a struggling British artist living in Brussels with bankruptcy looming. But Houseago decided to change direction pack up his life, destroy his old work and leave Europe to make a new start in Los Angeles. "Now everyone thinks I was being canny and strategic by moving to LA," the artist has said. "But in fact it was an act of desperation." 

He had $300 when he arrived in Los Angeles in 2003 and now his work commands tens of thousands of dollars. Today, at his large studio building in East Los Angeles, Houseago employs a staff of 20 and has five foundries in the US casting his sculptures in plaster or clay and into bronze. His work has been exhibited at the Whitney Biennial and at the Museum of Contemporary in LA, the Stedelijk in Amsterdam as well as at Venice's Palazzo Grassi and prestigious private galleries in London, Zurich, Brussels and New York. 

Back in Rome, Houseago moves quickly through the Gagosian's main gallery at the opening of his show and disappears through a large, swivelling door to celebrate the sale of several of his large works that night. The Roman crowd begins to disperse and wander out into the cool grey twilight. Outside the soaring columned entrance of the Gagosian, suited drivers lounge against their black Mercedes smoking, waiting for their charges to exit. 

Roman Figures is at the Gagosian Gallery from Tuesday June 4th until July 26th 2013 at Via Francesco Crispi 16, 00187 Rome Italy. The gallery is open: Monday–Friday 10.30am-7:00pm and by appointment. Telephone: +39 06 420 86498. Thomas Houseago's Striding Figure/Standing Figure is also concurrently running in Rome at the Galleria Borhese until July 7th 2013. 

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Artist Thomas Houseago working on a sculpture at his studio in Los Angeles. He said to the Financial Times: "I sometimes sit down with my daughter and she asks what I have been doing. I'll say 'I've been rolling around in mud for the whole day and it didn't work out.' You come to the end of the day and think: Jesus....this is a very odd way to make your living."

The opening of Thomas Houseago's new show Roman Figures at the Gagosian Gallery. Photograph by Ambrosio De Lauro

Thomas Houseago's show in Rome with the Reclining Figure (For Rome) at the centre of the great ovoid room. The unfinished side of the sculpture shows the rough plaster and iron armature inside. Photograph by Ambrosio De Lauro

Untitled (Walking Boy on a Plinth) 2013 Plaster, hemp, iron and redwood 208x76.2x81.3cm. Photograph by Ambrosio De Lauro

Roman Masks II 2013 Plaster, hemp and iron 75.5x58x29.7cm. Photograph by Ambrosio De Lauro 

Yet to be Titled (Hollow nose mask) 2013 Plaster, hemp and iron 67.6x53.8x21.7cm. Photograph by Ambrosio De Lauro 

The splendid fluted columns at the entrance to the Gagosian Gallery in Rome. Originally built in 1921 as a bank, the gallery was created in 2007 by architects Firouz Galdo and Caruso St John. Photograph by Ambrosio De Lauro

First Light 2006 Tuf-cal, hemp, iron, clay and graphite 154.8x111.7x147.3cm

Untitled (Red Man) 2008 Bronze 362.2x152.4x121.9cm

Striding Figure II (Ghost) 2012 Bronze and steel 472.4x200.7x304.8cm

Lying Figure (Mother Father) Bronze 2011 Ile de Vassiviere Centre International D'art Du Paysage

Hauser & Wirth exhibition I'll be your Sister exhibition of Houseago's works in Savile Row, London 2012 

 Untitled (Sprawling Octapus Man) 2009 Bronze 256x213x152cm

Standing Figure (Rome I) 2013 Plaster, hemp and iron 358.1x170.2x236.2cm. Photograph by Giorgio Benni. Copyright Thomas Houseago

Standing Figure (Roman Figure I) 2013 Plaster, hemp and iron 358.1x160x132.1cm. Photograph Giorgio Benni. Copyright Thomas Houseago 

Baby is Houseago's  three-metre tall sculpture that was exhibited at the Whiteny Biennial in 2010. Plaster, hemp, iron, charcoal and board

Design Interview: Ferruccio Laviani talks about the Tuareg Lamp

Launched this year at Milan's international furniture fair, the new Tuareg lamp was designed by Ferruccio Laviani for Italian lighting company Foscarini, reports Jeanne-Marie Cilento

Contemporary art is one of the sources of inspiration for the prolific Laviani and the new lamp is designed to look like an installation that could be in a gallery. The Italian designer also created the dazzling Good Vibrations cabinet for Fratelli Boffi, another of his designs exhibited at the Salone del Mobile in April. 

When Michele De Lucchi was a key member of the influential Memphis group in the 1980s, Laviani went to work at his studio as a young designer. The Bourgie lamp Laviani later designed for Kartell became one of the iconic pieces in the neo-baroque movement. However, the new Tuareg lamp has a more anarchic form like a group of sticks flung together. The minimalist, sculptural look is created by seemingly random intersecting tubes. At more than two metres high, the Tuareg can be used as a reading, wall or floor lamp and has three lights that can be turned on and off individually.

The structure of the design is in three parts with branches each housing an LED light that can be adjusted 320 degrees. Colour also plays an important role in the design and defines the silhouette. The lamp is in two different hues, orange which is meant to suggest the anti-rust paints used to coat industrial piping and a contrasting matt black. 

Click play to see the interview with designer Ferruccio Laviani.

Photo Essay: Colours of the Island of Burano in Venice Italy

The vividly hued houses that form colourful rows along all of the glinting canals of Burano 

Andreas Romagnoli travelled to the Venetian island of Burano to shoot the remarkable jewel-like small houses lining narrow canals and tranquil piazzas. The island is otherworldly and silent but for the washing flapping in the wind and the staccato calls of one neighbour to another, write Andreas Romagnoli and Jeanne-Marie Cilento.

THERE can be few other places in the world where primary colours are used with such abandon to decorate houses. The buildings of Burano may be less sophisticated than the better-known main island of Venice seven kilometres away across the lagoon, but the sense of joy created by its little houses overlooking boats passing slowly by along the canals make an enchanting atmosphere.

Each house in Burano is unique, painted in vibrant reds, pinks, blues, greens and violets. The small, rectilinear buildings encapsulate centuries and layers of history and traditions. The rows of houses symbolise the hopes and fears of a small seaside village that consciously chose to have an optimistic vision of its urban spaces.

First settled by the Romans, for centuries the men of Burano have earned their living from the sea. The women still make lace in the doorways of their shaded front rooms. The island's famous lace has its origins in the 16th century when needles arrived on the island from the then Venetian colony of Cyprus. Leonardo da Vinci visited in 1481 and purchased a cloth for the main altar of the Milan cathedral. The lace was exported across all of Europe but by the 18th century was in decline. The industry revived in 1872 when a school of lace making was opened and today is still made carefully by hand.

Wandering through Burano's narrow alleyways and along the town's canals gives you a sense of the island’s history. Fishermen prepare their craft, children play in the backstreets while lines of washing float in the breeze overhead and old men gather to pass the time of day. Community life here seems timeless. The men sitting in the piazzas or by the canals seem to wait for you to ask why their houses are painted the colour of ripe strawberries or plums, why they still live in a small village pummelled by strong winds and full of wintry isolation in the long, cold months. But speaking to the islanders, they give you a strong sense of their pride and endurance.

The towns simple architectural shapes and forms stir the heart and imagination, some gleam in the sun and others are half in shadow. Burano has a heady mix of local tradition and globalisation, calm waters and green grass, crowds and solitude. As you leave the entrancing little island behind on the jugging vaporetto, you look back at the disappearing houses glowing like precious stones in the last rays of the sun and wonder if it was all a dream.

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The local government controls the range of colours inhabitants can choose for their houses

This vibrant magenta is one of the town's signature hues combined with the traditional green shutters

Washing hangs across piazzas and canals across Burano flapping in the sea winds

The brilliant colour gives life to the roofscapes

Fishing boats are parked in front of their owner's doors ready to head out into the lagoon

The rows of jewel-coloured houses form some of the most enchanting urban piazzas in Italy

The painted walls also give a sense of Oscar Niemeyer's use of brilliant colour but on a miniature scale

The brightly-coloured Venetian chimneys of Burano's houses add to the sense of light-hearted design

The houses have a simple, rectilinear design and appear almost two dimensional

Sharp shadows and angles of light heighten Burano's palette of colours

Geometric details stand out like art installations against the blue sky of May

 Wrought-iron decorates the facades of the houses providing small balconies and shelter from the rain

The contrasting colours and shapes create a heady mix of different hues within the narrow streets 

Even cleaning implements take on the look of an art installation in Burano

Pale violet and celestial blue make a charming combination topped by a roof of terracotta tiles

 Not all of Burano is postcard perfect ~ the damp from the sea is always rising and here the stucco separates from the ancient brickwork

A dilapidated house creates one of the only pale corners in the town

Small building details become like works of modern art against the backdrop of Burano

Wooden shutters close up the  houses against the hot afternoon sun

Clothes float in the breeze while two women talk in one of Burano's quiet piazzas

Boats and bicycles are the main modes of transport in Burano

A calm-eyed image of Christ gazes out from one of the terracotta-coloured walls of the town