London Fashion Week SS22 highlights: Fashion East

Fashion East has continued its support for designers at London Fashion Week, showcasing five designers for SS22 including Goomheo, Chet Lo, Jawara Alleyne, HRH and Maximilian.

Goomheo

Goomheo presents barely-there chain tops and swirl-slashed trousers, flaunting the body with an exhibitionist flair and exploring the idea of nakedness as both a source of subversion and as a natural state.

Eye motifs return this season as slashes on thigh-cladding shorts and micro-miniskirts, offering brazen peeks of hipbones and butt cheeks. Interlocking trails of jersey wind around the body into jumpsuits, hems are curved up by tight gathers of vegan suede, and the legs of blue jeans are tightly bound by trails of bleached denim.

Goom Heo grew up in Jinju, South Korea, moving to London in 2011 to enrol on Central Saint Martins’ Art Foundation, before progressing onto the school’s BA Fashion Design with Print. For her 2017 graduate collection, she received L’Oréal Young Talent Award.

Maximilian

For Spring/Summer 2022, Maximilian looks to the sun-soaked colours, distinct sounds and vibrant flair of life on the islands that constellate the Caribbean Sea.

The collection is direct in its simplicity - an emphasis on ultra-luxe yet unexpected fabrics and practical silhouettes epitomise the label’s spirit: West Indian cheerfulness tempered by a sense of restraint.

HRH

The second collection by HRH mimics dynamic sportsmanship and the ways in which athletes dress themselves. The designer, formerly a gymnast herself, takes her first foray into swimwear, particularly inspired by the Olympics.

Carrying along themes from her debut collection with Fashion East, this a continuous thread from last season, creating a fantasy team dripping in Lucky talismans, ready for any physical feet.

For SS22 HRH has expanded the glistening vision to swimwear, accessorised to the maximum with items such as baby bags and sparkling sunglasses.

Jawara Alleyne

For his second Fashion East presentation, Jawara Alleyne is showing his latest work-in-progress in the exploration of repurposing, draping and recontextualising.

London-based Alleyne’s work is centred around freeing the body and the mind from the constraints of fashion, with his attitudes to clothing informed by growing up in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.

Alleyne is also honest about working within his means, highlighting the unfair expectations about what a young designer can and should spend on materials for garments. Each piece presented by Alleyne has been made in his bedroom in east London.

Chet Lo

For Chet Lo’s Fashion East debut, the Asian American designer brings to life a tropical haven to contrast against the grimmest days of quarantine everyone has experienced.

Unabashed sexuality and a futuristic take on knitwear are on full display. After a year of no celebrations and play, this collection offers pieces consumers will wear out again as they make up for lost time.

Lo uses his signature knit techniques and strategic pattern cutting to subvert traditional resort wear.  Tracksuits have been reworked in lush terry cloth, panelled with his sheer spike knit fabric.

Chet Lo graduated from Central Saint Martins BA Knitwear in the summer of 2020. A former intern at Proenza Schouler and Maison Margiela under John Galliano, Lo takes traditional conventions of knitwear and aims to flip it on its head.