Emerging Fervour

After spending a week touring around London Fashion Week exhibits I saw plenty of emerging talent. For me, Viking Wong certainly stood out among this expansive group. As a young British graduate, originally from Hong Kong, he displayed top notch tailoring in wearable fashion pieces. This is only his third collection and his first Spring/Summer collection but his skill and potential are remarkable. I was lucky to be able to ask him a few questions and can now fill you in on this talented, emerging designer.

Tell us a bit about yourself and your background of what got you into fashion design?

I was born and raised in Hong Kong until the age of 15, then I left to study and wandered around the world. I’ve been brought up with a business background, my family is in the garment industry so it’s only natural I go for something similar. Besides I am a free spirit, I can’t work in a 9 to 5 office job. Eventually, one thing lead to another, I got into London College of Fashion doing womenswear and graduated with a 1st class honours, gained some experiences in competitions and got picked up by Vauxhall Fashion Scout to make a debut in London & Paris Fashion Week straight after graduation.

Luckily ‘Girl Can’t Talk’ can!! And she’s taken some time out to answer some questions we’ve sent her way. Kathy, who’s a full time fashion design student at London College of Fashion, has woken our interest as although she’s insanely busy having just started her degree as a women Womenswear Designer / Pattern Cutter, she’s found the time to design some amazing accessories which we already raved about a few months ago.

Tell us a bit about how it all started, why fashion, when did you realise you wanted to become a designer?

Girl Can’t Talk: I’m very much starting out as a designer and its all a learning curve for me. I’ve always loved drawing and creating, there’s many photographs of me as a child wearing newspaper and sellotape costumes I’d created and I guess I’ve loved to create since then. I was given the gift of a sewing machine from my boyfriend a few years ago and started to make accessories and re-work vintage clothes and make simple garments and so my Etsy store evolved from there.

School Of Seven Bells recently released their new single “Heart Is Strange” taken from their second album “Disconnect From Desire”. Benjamin Curtis and twin sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza met in 2004 while touring. They decided to end their commitments to their old bands and eventually became School Of Seven Bells by the end of 2006. Considering their history as individual artists, their formation as School Of Seven Bells and their music, it seemed obvious to ask a few questions about relationships.

What do your families think of your music? Do they like it?

Benjamin: Absolutely. I think both of our families are really proud of what we’ve accomplished so far.

When we went to see emerging designers last February at Vauxhall Fashion Scout, the only annoying thing was, how difficult it seemed to get your hands on their collections as only a few stores and even fewer online shops stocked some of them. 6 month later and this has all changed as the anticipated ‘Young British Designer’ platform has opened its virutal doors and we can all now own a piece from a talented British emerging designer such as Eudon Choi, Charlotte Taylor, Alice Palmer, Ada Zanditon and many more!!

We love the site, not only for itself (it’s beautifully designed and so well thought through) but for someone to take a chance and support these great hidden talents. We just had to find out a bit more on what makes the ‘Young British Designer’ team tick:

We’ve been excited about the launch of your platform since we’ve heard about it months ago, but please tell us a bit more, what is YoungBritish Designers?

Young British Designers: Young British Designers was established in January this year by the four founding members: Debra Hepburn, Stuart Jackson, Julian Whitehead and myself Adriana Wheatley.

The lovely people at Qype asked Nat and I to be interviewed for their feature on bloggers. If you haven’t checked out our link on Facebook, we’ve got some of the interview here.

Qype: Can you tell Qypers who you are and what you do?

Sara: Hello! I’m Sara and I co-founded Emerging Fervour with Nathalie. We used to work together at a creative agency as project managers (she was my boss) and one thing led to another and our mutual passion for fashion gave us the idea to start our own blog and write about all the amazing things we find.

Nathalie: I’m Nathalie and when I don’t play with the fashion world, I am a project consultant for anything digital. I used to be a developer and then moved into project management but having worked over 10 years in digital agencies, last year I decided to go it alone to see where it can take me as a contractor. A decision I’ve not regretted, and the best bit is, it’s given me a lot of extra time which I am able to dedicate to Emerging Fervour.

Qype: What prompted you to start your blog, and what elements do you think have contributed to it becoming so popular?

Sara: I remember talking to Nat one day about emerging designers, and how it’s really difficult finding them online and how amazing it would be if we put together that information and share it with people like us. We really started the blog to share all the great emerging designers and musicians because they’re just too amazing to be missed – the spotlight needs to be shared between the emergings and established, they need a platform too.

Nathalie: That was definitely the driving force. I think it might also be popular because we write from the heart, we write about our passion which makes it easy to find content and we just have a go at it. We might not have a formal background in fashion, but what we lack for in experience, we make up for in passion! We also have a few bloggers writing for us, so our readers get different views from the emerging music scene.

We’ve covered Beekay before, our favourite Menswear designer from LFW. I met up with him for an interview and a couple of drinks after AW10 to get his thoughts…

Tell us a little about Beekay, who is the guy behind the designer?

I always wanted to be an artist as a kid. Found a way through garments and sketching to bring my creativity out. I’m a dreamer & always looking at a way to make them a reality.

I remember you mentioned that when I saw you at ON|OFF in Feb…How did you find LFW this season?

This season was interesting in a way that a lot of designers came out with collections which you really didn’t expect from them. For me, it was the first time I exhibited/presented with Vauxhall fashion scout. It was a good experience & went pretty good.

Tell us a little about your AW10 collection.

It was inspired by circular shapes & twisted tree branches.

What are your plans for the rest of the year?

Entering different fashion competitions & working on my new collection.

So have you started thinking about your SS10 plans? Tell us!

An interview with Robert Raths, founder of Erased Tapes. Visit music is okay to read the German version.

Robert Raths originally came to London for architectural studies, but he stayed for music. Three years ago he founded the label Erased Tapes and proves in a quite impressive way that “the best things in life happen naturally.”

You gave up your own musical project to set up Erased Tapes. What was the reason you’ve changed your mind?

Erased Tapes: First I wanted to express myself musically. When I tried to transfer the music into a live show, I had to accept that it wasn’t working. It was hard trying to explain my musical concepts to other musicians. They usually gave me the questioning look. But for me it was always about creating something new and different, I never wanted to sound like anybody else.
I think the point is, my music was packed with ideas and sounds which needed more space to develop themselves. The bottom line is, I came across all these musical elements I wanted to combine, which are now individual artists on the label. I started to focus more on other artists’ work than my own, rather being the observer than the creator, and that was a very fruitful development. For me it’s all about supporting my artists on every level and being constructive as a part of the creative process.

Two years have passed since Tunng released their last album Good Arrows. Now they’re back with a new sound and without an old member. And Then We Saw Land is an album full of charming and catchy tunes, embraced by the characteristic sound of Tunng. We met Becky Jacobs (vocals) and Mike Lindsay (guitar and vocals) on a boat on the Thames, the perfect place to talk about their  journey, isn’t it?

© Photography by Evelyn Kutschera for Emerging Fervour

Your new album “And Then We Saw Land” sounds really different compared to what you’ve done before. Where does the change come from?

Mike: There are a few things like Sam leaving the band, which changed things vocally, but we also didn’t want to make another ‘glitch cut and paste’ kind of electronic record. We’ve done that and we still like that stuff, but we wanted to try something we haven’t  done before. A record that uses synths as synths not as chopped up sounds for instance. We wanted to make something that is bigger and proud, where people can sing along to. I think the album is the reflection of our live shows from the past couple of years. We really enjoyed the reaction of the audience to certain moments of the shows, when we played songs which had been reworked a to give them a bigger sound. That’s what we wanted to capture with the new album.

Last week, I wrote about Tetsuya Uenobe and his amazing footwear…this week I have something even better…words from Tetsuya himself. Check out his interview below.

Tetsuya, I adore your work and it’s obvious passion is your drive. But do you find it difficult breaking into the mainstream fashion market with such unusual creations?

Yes I understand that. My artline is like a performance to show my ability and passion. I hope people like my other lines on my website. At the beginning, I just made shoes that were only slightly ‘arty’, which I exhibited at a few trade shows; however this left very little interest from buyers. There were probably two main reasons for this, cost, and of course nothing was particularly eye-catching. This is the reason why I have changed my train of though and instead, decided that making people smile and ignoring budget issues would be the way forward. And besides, If I did not have my artline, you would not be interested in my works!?

Hmmm, you have a point there…So we know that you worked with Hanae Mori, that must have been a dream come true for you, what did you learn from your time spent with her?

She was an organiser for the exhibitions you mentioned in your previous post (the Open Gallery and the Art Tower Mito). She managed whole concepts and checked the themes and quality of the work on display. I had an interview with her once and the opportunity to have a chat each time during both exhibitions. She was always curious about the work going up. I took a lot from the talks we had; she asked me in the interview if I read newspaper – I think this means I have to be open minded and not just look straight ahead, but all around. She also advised me that I should hire at least 3 employees within 5 years. I took from that, that I should increase my brand awareness and grow it into a respected and stable label.

We did a piece on Jeni Jaques and Harlow in Chains not too long ago; and we’ve gone one better and managed to get an interview with her. There are few designers who move me with their stories behind their reasons to become designers…Jeni Jaques from Harlow in Chains is one of the very few. Her anwers to my questions are filled with so much passion and love that she would even inspire Gordon Brown to become a jewellery designer. This lady is incredible…take a peek at our interview with her.

EF: Jeni, we absolutely love your style…what inspires you to create these big statement pieces?

Jeni Jaques: Thank you!! I’ve always loved art and creation in all forms: painting, illustration, sewing/fashion design & construction, writing, photography and in recent years constructing one-of-a-kind jewelry and accessories… I’ve also always had a love for older vintage and antique items and have been collecting those since I was a young child. I love the history, mystery and sense of wonder that each and every piece holds: ‘What kind of woman wore this brooch?’; ‘Was this locket a gift from a loved one?’; ‘Did it hold a special meaning?’; ‘What journey has this piece followed to end up in my hands, to use in part to create an entirely new piece?’ It’s mysterious and slightly haunting; I love that…