Fashion Scout, the international showcase for fashion pioneers, is delighted to announce the four winners of the Ones To Watch Award for London Fashion Week SS20: Gala Borovic, IA London, Studio Adaptive Skins and AV. Fashion Scout’s Ones To Watch Award plays a crucial role in raising the profile of emerging designers on a global scale, giving four designers the opportunity to showcase their creativity to an international audience of buyers and media.
Selected from hundreds of applicants by a judging panel, the four winners impressed industry experts including Martyn Roberts – Fashion Scout’s Founder and Creative Director, Contanza Lombardi – Next Gen Buyer at Browns, Niamph Tuft – Fashion Revolution and Hannah Craggs – Youth Trends Editor at WGSN. Using their expertise, the judging panel gathered in June 2019, spending the day looking through designs and portfolios to establish this season’s winners:
AV – French designer Vincent Lapp launched his couture label in 2018, dedicated to creating mindful fashion, tackling society absurdities and engaging in essential struggles such as sustainability. A fashion graduate from Central Saint Martins, his AW19 collection was developed as a statement against fanaticism and religious obscurantism following a satirical approach, and his SS20 collection takes the theme further, looking at the place of the female body within religion alongside addressing the covering of the body, hair and face. The new collection is a key point in the development of a sustainable path for the brand as it involves the use of materials such as biological cotton, Cupro®, Tencel®, rayon and natural rubber, as well as the responsible sourcing of silk. It is leather and fur free and encourages upcycling with the use of authentic fishing net and natural dyeing with vegetable.
Gala Borovic – Originating from Serbia, Gala Borovic launched her namesake label in 2018 after gaining two Masters degrees from Fashion Design, at Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade and ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in the Netherlands. The brand symbolizes an adult playground, a platform which counter reacts on the emotionless and remote fashion industry. By focusing on textile, print and concept development Gala’s working process regularly includes capturing the intimacy of essential life moments. The collection to be showcased at Fashion Scout has taken inspiration from ‘The Base’, a private art studio created in 2015 which represents a modern space for justified escape from reality. Initially empty and deserted, the interior was built through the arrangement of many old things, second-hand furniture, antiques, waste and amateur art creations of members. Often chaotic, and subject to constant transformations as well as sudden changes in appearance and energy, The Base inspired the SS20 prints and textures used in the collection.
IA London – Founded in 2017 by Cambridge-based designer Ira Iceberg, whose vision is one of wholly personalised fashion, IA London delivers artistic content in the form of distinctive looking garments and accessories. To support IA London’s vision a unique design process was developed in stages, whereby a series of original hand painted artworks created by the founder are digitally printed directly on the pattern. These paintings become the surface of IA’s garments and define their distinctive appearance, unprecedentedly integrating fashion and art. IA London’s SS20 collection ‘I’m Bias-Blind’ is inspired by King Lear, the recurring images of sight and blindness illustrate the theme of self-knowing and consciousness, producing a situation in which those with healthy eyes are ignorant of what is going on around them, and those without vison, appear to ‘see’ the clearest.
Studio Adaptive Skins – Studio Adaptive Skins was founded in 2018 by designer Jef Montes. Adaptive Skins is a textile architecture studio based in Arnhem, Netherlands, with a strong emphasis on responsive materials, a new approach on creating shape rather than cutting patterns out of 2D fabric. The materials are applied on the human skin but also connected to the structure of a building and interior. Responsive to the human and its surrounding the textiles improve the function and experience of: body, light, energy, areas, acoustics and climate. The studio also offers a wide spectrum of adaptive textiles and services to other companies and sustainability and upcycling are an important starting point. The idea is to design a new production chain, starting from the fibre/yarn and following up all the way towards the material/garment.
Ones To Watch winners will showcase at Fashion Scout in the brand-new London venue, Victoria House, Bloomsbury Square, this September. Fashion Scout’s relaunch sees it take over 22,000 sqft of the contemporary basement venue, with its unique architectural style that combines industrial elements and blank wall canvas, ideal for showcasing the work of Fashion Scout’s designers.
