Student Fashion Display at the Powerhouse Museum

Student Fashion Display at the Powerhouse Museum

From a -blood' soaked evening gown exploring love, obsession and violence to an experiment with bonded foil textiles, this year's Student Fashion display at the Powerhouse Museum highlights the creativity and talent of the next generation of Australian fashion designers.

Each year Student Fashion showcases outfits from the final year ranges of top students from four Sydney-based fashion design schools. Illustrating their diverse design signatures and technical skills, this year's display includes: Yousef Akbar from the Fashion Design Studio, TAFE NSW, Sydney Institute; Emma MacGregor of Raffles College of Design and Commerce; Rachel Kay from the University of Technology, Sydney; and Bronson Atkin from the Whitehouse Institute of Design.

VOID - Rachel Kay
Rachel describes her design aesthetic as minimal, clean and refined. VOID is her conceptual womenswear collection inspired by Japanese religious architecture and the way 'they've structured these buildings in unconventional shapes to allow light in at different angles, creating spaces that are really peaceful and calm". Using sculptural silhouettes and innovative foil bonded silks Rachel sought to invoke the subtle beauty held within this apparent austerity and create a celebration of light, structure and transcendence.

Hold - Bronson Atkin
Bronson's collection explores masculine identity through a sensual tailored silhouette that plays with notions of desire, ambiguity and the sensation of pleasure. Drawing on both tailoring and dressmaking techniques to refine the sensual silhouette he explains, 'rather than using a pattern block, the fabric has been draped directly onto the figure. By examining the fall of the cloth, and subtly easing it close to the body to follow the natural structure of a male's physique, the form of the garment is achieved". The collection's fluid identity is enhanced by fabrics, textures and prints which emulate the flickering visual static of -white noise.'

Metamorphosis - Emma MacGregor
Emma's hand-painted designs embody an allegory in which she compares her personal experiences with a mythical story entitled The Journey of the Koi Fish. The Koi experiences many challenges as it swims against the current. The gods reward its persistence by transforming it into a dragon. Each dress in Emma's graduate collection tell part of the story. 'The change in colour and silhouette shows the metamorphosis process of the Koi fish and myself….from novice design student with raw ambition to a designer now equipped with the techniques and knowledge," explains Emma.

Maasai x Medici gown and Distortion dress - Yousef Akbar
Yousef approaches fashion as a creative, seductive and wearable art – 'I am moved by whatever provokes my emotions and thoughts; whether it is a personal memory, event, person, artist or natural phenomenon".  His -blood' soaked, pearl and bead encrusted evening gown is his very visceral response to violence, culture and religion in Maasai and Medici history. English artist Francis Bacon's exploration of distortion and images in motion inspired the dramatic draped form of Yousef's Distortion dress. The unusual use of acrylic rods reference Bacon's use of -cages' around his subjects.

Over twenty years the annual Student Fashion display has profiled the work of around 150 fashion students, many of whom have gone on to outstanding careers in a diverse range of fashion related fields; from Timo Rissanen, currently Associate Professor of fashion and sustainability at Parsons: The New School for Design, New York and Prue Rainey, who is Head of Design at CUE, to Dion Lee who represented Australia in the prestigious International Woolmark Award finals and recently showed his latest collection in New York Fashion Week for the second consecutive year.

'The Powerhouse Museum holds the largest collection of historical and contemporary costume and textiles in Australia. The diversity and strength of this collection and the programs that underpin it are a continued resource and inspiration for the next generation of Australian fashion designers," said Powerhouse Museum Director, Rose Hiscock.

Exhibition: Student Fashion
Dates: 22 March – 17 August 2014 
Address: Powerhouse Museum, 500 Harris Street, Ultimo, Sydney
Website: www.powerhousemuseum.com
Hours: 10am to 5pm (closed Christmas Day)
Admission: Free with general admission $12 adult, $6 child, $8 concession, $30 family