TRUMAN

REVIEW

Located at The Truman Brewery in Shoreditch, Middlesex University presented its 2013 Graduating class across four courses including Fash-ion Communication and Styling, Fashion Design, Graphics and Pho-tography. In this review I have chosen five of my highlights from the show who I believe have a promising future within their chosen fields.

3 Georgina Hunt 5 Stevie Hockaday 7 William Lakin 9 Tahlia Greatbatch 11 John Handford

GEOR

GINA

HU

NTAfter an internship at menswear designer Christopher Shannon, Georgina Hunt presented, for me, a stand out collection, influ-enced by sportswear juxtaposed against gentleman attire. Using fabric manipulation that gave the illusion of shirt pull-ing and tackling on the football field. Techniques like this made her the front runner of the show and gave an inkling for a prom-ising fiuture in fashion.

What were the main inspirations behind the collection?The main inspirations behind the collection came from an obsession with east london’s Upton Park market street style, the fabrics were influenced by football fans/ muslim elderly market goers. And the prints were taken from a photographic journal of the market, bras were repeated to create a camoflauge style print and a burst pipe was digitally printed on a clean white jump-er.

Who/What are your biggest influencesI get influenced by film, photography and the way peo-ple live and dress. My friends have been muses in the past and I have a habit of fusing research ideas to-gether, my pre collection saw inspiration from “Angst” an austrian pyscho horror and the game of football. It’s something that I find interesting and fun to design from.

What were the biggest challenges you faced?My biggest challenge from the collection laid in the make, as it has never been a strong skill of mine I found the idea of fusing a parka and a tailored coat together quite problematic, it probably took about 4 toiles to get the right balance between the two and it was a risk to make but one that I won’t regret.

Ideal client?My ideal client would be someone that isn’t afraid to show off a bit. He turns heads and is proud of it.

Describe Georgina Hunt in three words- Experimental, hybrid, fanatic.

STEV

IE HO

CKAD

AYLooking like they’d come straight from the snowy streets of Poland, Womenswear designer Stevie Hockaday kitted his girls out in baby pink parkas, knitwear and fur. For me this was one of the stand out collections, with giant marshmallow puffa coats and sportswear influences. The powder pink palette gave the classic boyish shapes that youthful girly twist.

What were the main inspirations behind the collec-tion?Northern working class culture, girls at school I hated but wanted to be, photo journalism by Brenda Ann Kennelly, when The Plastics wear pink on Tues-days

Who/What are your biggest influencesMy hometown and everyone in it, I grew up hating how close minded everyone was but I find it oddly endearing now

What were the biggest challenges you faced?Trying to not just design for Tammy Girl (which is what I wanted to do really) and money, but I man-aged to do it on the cheapest budget ever, most fabrics were no more than 4 quid a metre

Ideal client?Girls that work at Greggs or Courtney Stodden

Describe Stevie Hockaday in three words- Common, northern, pink

With this image above titled ‘Martyn, Sean and Jacob’, Wil-liam Lakin was awarded a Yellow Pencil at the D&AD Stu-dent Awards. The photographer, obsessed with characters and identity, created a series of photographs in Great Yarmouth called Florida Club, I chose to include Lakin, as I admired his use of unconven-tional faces and their attire in his images. The locations in the photos and atmosphere shots manage to capture a som-bre mood and provoke thought about who these people are and their stories.

WILL

IAM

LAKI

NWhat kind of people interest you?

All kinds of people interest me, usually ‘characters’. By this I mean people who have a story or look like they should. With the project Florida Club I approached all the people I photographed on the street so I would usually just have a short chat with them, which meant I didn’t really know anything about them; their ap-pearance just attracted my attention. My work is more about suggesting a story rather than actually telling one. For this reason I try not to direct people I

photograph too much as its their natural appearance which made me approach them in the first place.

Biggest influences

My main influence is Alec Soth. The first time I saw his portraits I loved them but didn’t know why. I couldn’t work out why they were so fascinating. It took me a long time to realise it was the way he went about finding and photographing his

subjects which made them so real. In my opinion no one else has ever achieved such believable interpretations of people whilst not shooting in the traditional docu-mentary sense. Joel Sternfeld and Stephen Shore are also big influences; the Ameri-

can road trip in general fascinates me.

With street culture as her inspiration, Tahlia has experimented with feminine styling with jew-els, pearls and brooches. Casting non stereotypical boys, she styled them in sportswear and added the accessories and captured them in a series of casual documentary set of photos and portraits. The book as a whole worked very well and you could eas-ily distinguish Tahlias signature style compared to alot of the other work shown in the exhibition.

TAHL

IA

GREA

TBAT

CHWhat were the main inspirations behind your book?

The main inspiration behind my work is gang culture in the UK and the idea of hyper-masculinity. I wanted to take the idea that someone who the media would portray as a ‘thug’ or whatever could be way

more than that perception.

Who/What are your biggest influences?I absolutely love Josh Cole’s Young Guns series, Simon Wheatley’s ‘Don’t Call Me Urban’ and John

Heale’s book ‘One Blood’. Also my own work class background, though detached from gang culture and London’s work class was also an influence.

What were the biggest challenges you faced?The biggest challenge for me was finding a style of photography that I was good at, felt comfortable

with and I felt had the best results. This is why a lot of my work was kind of ‘documentary’ style and I experimented with portraiture later

Style icon?I love Brooke candy, that kind of gangster stripper

vibe is spot on haha!

Describe your work style in three words-Candid, paradoxical and unorganised

JOHN

HA

NDFO

RD

For his final project, John Handford creates a series of fanzines with ti-tles such as Porn, Joggers and Bail. In ‘Bail’, John looked at infamous mug-shots of celebrities, and managed to turn what is usually seen as taboo and negative into an interesting piece of work

What was the thought process behind your project ‘Bail’?When I was arrested last year, I was taken down to the police station and mug shots were taken. I found the whole situation surreal and at the same time hilarious. I tried to get my mugshots afterwards but they wouldn’t release them to me so for ‘Bail’ I used images of pop culture icons who had been arrested.

Is there anything you’d change?

I wouldn’t change anything about my projects; I just wish I had more time!

Biggest influences? The people around me.

Describe your work style in three words- Graphic, minimal, bold

THEO SPENCER