London Fashion Week | Spring / Summer 2020 Fashion Scout's Ones To Watch Award Show

Serbian designer, Gala Borovic with two of her models at Fashion Scout’s ‘Ones To Watch’ Award SS20 show

We kicked off our London Fashion Week Spring / Summer 2020 season, with a trip to Victoria House. For LFW veterans, this is very much a familiar location and now for their 13th season, it’s the new home to Fashion Scout, which showcases international fashion pioneers from all around the globe.

Fashion Scout’s globally acclaimed Ones To Watch Award winners are always a joy to preview. Four emerging designers are given the opportunity to express their vision and showcase their creativity to an international fashion audience. Each year an array of fresh talent, with the confidence to push boundaries are both celebrated and provided with a platform to further develop their brands. This year the winners of the award were AV, Gala Borovic, IA London and Studio Adaptive Skins.

Vincent Lapp originally from Pessac, France launched his couture label AV, in 2018. A fashion graduate from Central Saint Martins, Lapp’s collection was brought to life as a statement against fanaticism and religious obscurantism. The SS20 collection continues on from Lapp’s past collections, looking at the place of the female body within religion, alongside addressing the covering of the body, face and hair. Inspiration has been taken from the French movie ‘Le ciel attendra’ (‘Heaven will wait’ in English), depicting how deceit and false promises can lead to radicalism and obscurantism.

Gala Borovic of Serbia, launched her namesake label in 2018. She see’s herself as a maximalist, experimenting with levelling up the importance of a process with the final outcome. Her brand symbolises an adult playground, which counter reacts on the emotionless and remote fashion industry.

For SS20, Gala Borovic has taken inspiration from ‘The Base’ a private art studio created in 2015 to represent a modern space for a justified escape from reality. The interior of the space honed many objects that had mostly been old and used, second-hand furniture, antiques and the creations of it’s members. The development of the space was very much by its members, who each left a trace of themselves either in physical of spiritual form. The prints and textures of Gala Borovic’s collection were inspired by this space and it’s artworks.

IA London is a British avant-garde fashion brand founded in 2017 by Cambridge based designer, Ira Iceberg. The SS20 collection entitled ‘I’m Bias-Blind,’ was inspired by the King Lear tragedy, written by William Shakespeare. The recurring images of sight and blindness illustrate the theme of consciousness and self awareness, creating a situation where those with healthy eyes are ignorant to their surroundings and those without vision, appear to ‘see’ the clearest and be much more conscious and aware. The healthy eyes would appear to be infected by prejudice, creating bias and a corrupted vision whereas the blindness embraces diversity.

Founded in 2018 by designer Jef Montes, Studio Adaptive Skins is a textile architecture based in Arnhem, Netherlands. With a strong emphasis on responsive materials, a new approach has been adapted to create shapes within the materials used, opposed to cutting patterns out of 2D fabric. For the SS20 showcase, we are seeing the past, present and future of the works crafted under Jef Montes lead. The inspiration for the collection is ‘La Moreneta,’ the statue depicting Madonna with a child on her lap. The statue is said to symbolise the universe, blessings and eternal life.