Three young designers are turning centuries of handmade tradition on their head

Faustine Steinmetz, Claire Barrow and Phoebe English are stretching the boundaries of what can be achieved by hand and redefining ideals of luxury - all while maintaining an appealingly raw edge

Rebecca Gonsalves
Saturday 21 February 2015 01:00 GMT
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The handiwork of Faustine Steinmetz, Claire Barrow and Phoebe English, as illustrated by Laura Quick
The handiwork of Faustine Steinmetz, Claire Barrow and Phoebe English, as illustrated by Laura Quick

The word artisan has been co-opted by conglomerates and flung around willy-nilly, so much so that it's almost impossible to give real craft the dues it deserves.

Thankfully, the rebellious nature of the London fashion crowd makes it the perfect incubator for ideas that stretch the boundaries of what can be achieved by hand and redefine ideals of luxury – all while maintaining an appealingly raw edge. Younger generations are often decried as lazy or lacklustre, but there is a sense of compulsion that proves that the youth of today still has something to say and strives to find an original way to say it.

Faustine Steinmetz's dedication to her craft is enough to put even the most hands-on designer to shame. The Parisian-born designer set up her own label after she acquired her first hand-loom in 2013, and hasn't looked back. For spring/summer 2015, her collection revolved around familiar mass-produced garments, "the forgotten denim found in your dad's wardrobe" which she deconstructed and then handmade from scratch. In this context that means hand-dyeing small batches of yarn which is then woven on the aforementioned looms, hand-knotted and embroidered and painted – by hand, naturally.

Claire Barrow's hand-painted leather jackets first came to mainstream fashion attention – we're talking worn by Rihanna on her album cover – in 2013, but by that time the University of Westminster graduate had already made her way into the pages of Vogue and on to the rails of influential boutique Joseph. Since graduating in 2012, Barrow has risen through the ranks of London talent incubators Fashion East and NewGen to create fleshed-out collections that still retain the erstwhile charm of her 'do-it-yourself' design ethos and anarchic aesthetic.

Phoebe English has an ethereal quality about her that resonates through her designs, perhaps more accurately described as constructions, although with none of the weight that could be construed by such a term.

For English, the process begins with an abstract idea – a process, say, or a feeling – which she translates through the resurrection of lost, forgotten or little-used techniques.

Eschewing traditional catwalk shows in favour of a more creative solution, for spring/summer 2015, English created a multi-level circular set encrusted with glass in which to frame a collection of multi-layered and artfully deconstructed textiles and fabrics.

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