High Flyers

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“It’s got the biggest disco ball in Europe!” Claire Barrow announces in her calm Northern English accent. The young designer just finished the new staff uniforms for the nightclub inside London’s W Hotel—a somewhat unusual project for the University of Westminster graduate who has been making a name for herself in the London fashion world with her unique hand-painted leather jackets, which also caught Carine’s attention last season.

Now, seven days to go until her FW15 presentation at London Fashion Week, Claire and her team are in full work mode. Across the room hair stylist Raphael Salley gently blows air into the face of one of the street cast models wearing a calico toile of an oversized wool coat. Fans and ventilators in the presentation will make the girls look like they’re flying—this collection is all about wind after all. “The street casting is the bit that takes the longest”, stylist Alice Goddard explains later. “But it’s the best bit.”

And it is important. The girls will slip into the role of a young woman working in a high-rise office in the City of London—who wants to fly away and not be there. In front of photographs of Amelia Earhart and other women pilots, Claire elaborates on the story of “High Flyers”, the name of the collection, about struggling as a woman in today’s world, in our system of success—“but not in an obvious, feminist way. It’s more than just saying these women are ‘really empowered’.”

For her most colorful collection yet, Claire translated her signature hand-painted illustrations into beautiful CMYK screenprints that will feature on every piece. Fine dots of layered colors make up pictures of flying sphinxes on lightweight, floaty golden silk dresses, big belted wool coats and leather jackets and furry hats—an evolution from the DIY punk aesthetics of the last collections into a more refined, beautiful product.

“I just want it to look really nice”, Claire explains as she gets out a pair of earrings in the shape of silk scarves blowing in the wind—a collaboration with East London jewellery designer Tatty Devine. And nice it all looks for sure, be it whirling through the sky over London’s skyline or simply on the dancefloor, next to a wind machine, under the biggest disco ball in Europe.

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createdAt:Thu, 22 Jun 2017 13:36:09 +0000
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