The Bite Magazine - Spring/Summer 2023 - Issue 33

bitefashion Sarah Dowle Jiao Xie Hannah Salmon HANNAH SALMON The 1920s hedonistic, playful artistry and the Bauhaus movement inspired Hannah Salmon to create her collection ‘NahNah’. The Bauhaus, founded in 1919 by German architect Walter Gropius and lasted un- til 1933, merged all artistic mediums into one unified approach and combined an individual’s artistry with mass production. It was known to be abstract, angular, and geometric, with little ornamentation. The collection translated smooth, bulbous shapes and steady lines derived from Bau- haus described as “a composition of six figures in circles and stripes”. Hannah’s soft fabrications were created through intri- cate machine knitting and layered textiles to achieve complex pieces. She utilised techniques such as felting, ambitious pat- tern-cutting and a hue of solid colours to uphold the Bauhaus ethos in her collec- tion. JIAO XIE German-Swiss poet Hermann Hesse declared in his novel Der Steppenwolf, “Everybody has only one body, but more than one soul”. Thus designer Jiao Xie who hails from China, used her vivid imagina- tion to detach herself from the realities of this challenging world to find sanctuary, comfort, excitement and fun in her pri- vate fantasy world. Entitled ‘A World Of My Own’, the colourful palette consisted of calm in white, sunny in yellow, sexy in red, lovely in pink, neutral in blue and sad in black, reflecting the freedom of private space as the stage for exploring multiple states of emotion. She also noted the cy- clic nature of human feelings and their come-and-go transience whilst declaring, “Home is a stage, and I am the performer”. SARAH DOWLE For her collection ‘Giants Among Men’, designer Sarah Dowle created a personal religion where deities are giants that move among humanity and bless their followers in shadow. Her dramatic statement col- lection explored the belief that something more significant than human mortality exists while simultaneously acknowledg- ing the shadow of the incomprehensible. Through an ominous colour palette, Sarah demonstrated the division between God and Worshipper through imposing vol- umes. One garment appeared to have the mascu- line statue’s bloated colossal limbs dragged across the floor as though trying to cling fervently onto the arms of its wearer, whilst a floor-length coat train morphed into a human shadow. Within the collection, hu- man iconography informed innovative sil- houettes with sculptural elements, includ- ing solid yet wearable substructures. With leather as a central element, it generated an animalistic, organic dimension to symbol- ise durability and bridged a gap between sculptural art and fashion. www.graduatefashionweek.com www.westminster.ac.uk