Best emerging designers.Limited edition pieces.

Picked by you.

Issue Nr. 8 // April 2012

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SIWEN JIAN

contents

CollectionInterview

ZAIDA G. BALMASEDACollection

DANIEL SILVERSTAINCollectionInterview

COLIN MCDOWELLInterview

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SIWEN JIANCollection11

“The key piece of the collection is centered around tailored, structured outerwear combined with a soft, delicate silhouette.”

The 24-year-old designer, who has just been featured on VOGUE Talents, eschews the physical model and armed with sketches and fabric, carves away until she has a startlingly romantic, deconstructed work of wearable art.

MUUSE has caught up with Jian at the Royal College of Art in London to chat romance, video games and French fashion.

Your 2011 graduate collection to debut on MUUSE combined architecture with rosebud, swirl patterns. Although quite structured, would you say that your designs are a bit romantic?

I think it’s my aesthetic when it comes to my designs. There’s always a soft touch to it. But I’m also interested in tailoring. So, I would like bring hard lines to my next collection…I like beautiful work; I don’t like pretty. Pretty is too flat.

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Tell me about your own design process. How do you go about producing a new garment or col-lection?

I rely on drawing a lot. I’ll draw first and then see if I can get the shape down on the stand and then I’ll alter my draw-ings. I’ve met designers that can transfer their idea onto the stand and the garment straightaway, but I can’t.

Where do you normally look for inspiration?

I would like it to be more of an organic process that I can enjoy. I go to muse-ums – the V&A Museum is my favourite, and I like the Design Museum and the Wallace Collection – and sometimes I do observational drawings. But I will always look to find inspiration outside of fash-ion. That’s why I don’t look at fashion magazines, although I do reference some designers.

(more on MUUSE.com)

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ZAIDA G. BALMASEDA

“My pieces are for enlightened women, for critical thinkers, rather than consumers, for whom individuality and authenticity are a priority. Bringing

fashion on a social level, making it become the “Manifesto” of the Slow Fashion revolution is the core point of my vision.”

Manifesto

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Zaida is a Puerto Rico born and raised designer who settled in New York to accomplish a BA in International Fashion Design at Fashion Institute of Technology, with a specialization in knitwear.

She is engaged in the creation of an invisible yet perceivable link between environment, maker and wearer. Exploring the realm between art and fashion, she creates multi use garments that combine humble materials with exquisite artisanal techniques. She expresses her empathy with nature using natural fibers and low-impact dyes to build her garments, always on the edge between art and fashion.

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DANIEL SILVERSTAINA.WhACk.N.BLITE

“A.WHACK.N.BLITE is a fall winter collection inspired by the foundation of the Bauhaus and Piet Mondrian with a wink to the 60’s. This collection is the

best description of the first things I see in the world of design - shape and color. I was always attracted to architecture and industrial design and in my opinion

the 60‘s is one of the best decades of innovation in design, simplicity, and futurism.”

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Daniel Silverstain explores textiles and natural forms in an era of hi-technology and industrialism. Architecture and art of the mid-20th century interlock with every inspiration and Daniel uses them in a range of simplified shapes that compliment the female body and give it a sophisticated, yet comfortable look.

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“Fashion is a lifestyle” says Silverstain – he creates clothing for strong women, who are not afraid to experiment with him. And I don’t mean that in a sexual way – he designs for women who choose to express and expand on his creations to create a story of their own. As he put it, he designs for the “unconventional feminine”.

Hailing from the town of Ra’anana in Israel, Daniel Silverstain is fascinating in both his story and his work. Currently a student at FIT, 25 year old Silverstain lives his life fashionably – breathing and exhaling fashion, dreaming a fashion daze in the land of nod.

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COLIN MCDOWELLfashion fringe founder

helps Young Designers Take flight

MUUSE caught up with McDowell at London’s IMG Fashion offices to talk about why it’s important to push young designers like former Fashion Fringe

award winners Basso & Brooke and Erdem, so that they can fly.

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“Come to the edge. We might fall.Come to the edge. It’s too

high! COME TO THE EDGE!And they came. And he pushed. And

they flew.”

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The creation of Fashion Fringe is McDowell’s response to what he said was a serious gap in buyers and journalists flocking to London Fashion Week more than eight years ago. What LFW then lacked in vitality and spirit, Fashion Fringe would cast into the spotlight.

Ask Colin McDowell to define Fashion Fringe, an annual initiative that he launched in 2003 to mentor and sponsor young and talented UK designers, and the famed British fashion journalist will read to you “Come to the edge”, a 1969 poem by Christopher Logue:

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See many more designer collections on MuuSE.com:

Annie Woodcock, LCF

Edda Thors, RISD

Minna Lundgren, Central Saint Martins

Vera Thorardottir, Istituto Marangoni

Siwen Jian, RCA

...

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