A Kingston MA Fashion student  has created concepts for a range of clothing for disabled women which combines sophisticated style with practicality and comfort. Garfield Li’s funky yet functional womenswear collection was inspired by a visit to a children’s hospice near Luton. “I met a boy in a wheelchair whose mother had cut the back out of his jacket so it was more comfortable for him to wear,” the 26 year old, originally from Hong Kong, explained. This sparked the young designer’s idea to explore whether he could create a range of cutting-edge fashion specifically tailored for wheelchair users.

“A lot of the clothes designed for disabled people are quite old fashioned and look very medical,” Garfield, who grew up in a small village in West Lancashire after moving to the United Kingdom, said. “I wanted to design a collection that would really appeal to young women, whether disabled or not, but that would also address the specific needs of people with spinal conditions.”

Garfield’s illustrations detail a range of jackets, tops, trousers and dresses in a palette of soft pinks, blues and natural creams with a strong 18^th Century Parisian influence. The garments are fluid and loose fitting, to be made in light, slightly stretchy fabrics for ease of movement. The dresses and tops are embellished with sumptuous embroidery and beading, although the backs of the garments are left plain for comfort when sitting down. One of Garfield’s favourite items is his design for a baby pink knee-length dress with fine shoulder straps, richly embroidered and adorned on the front and sides with tiny crystal beads. “The length of a garment is very important as a dress or skirt will ride up when sitting in a wheelchair,” he explained. “I had to bear that in mind when designing the clothes.”

The two jackets in the collection have the back, middle panel removed, so they are comfortable to wear in a wheelchair and easy to put on and take off without help when sitting down. The young fashionista has even included a medical corset in one of the dresses in his collection. “Corset dresses are very popular at the moment and, as many people with spinal conditions have to wear a medical version, I decided to create a garment that incorporated one within the fabric,” Garfield explained.

The Kingston student’s forward thinking fashion line recently captured the imagination of judges at the WestFocus Bright Ideas competition, which recognises student innovation at universities across London. Garfield’s collection scooped top prize in the market research category for projects most worthy of further exploration with consumers. The designer was awarded £500 worth of market research with sponsors Marketest. “It’s really exciting to be able to develop my research into this collection even further,” the young designer said. “I’m going to be working with the market research company to design a questionnaire for wheelchair users, their carers and hospital staff. It will help me find out more about the issues disabled people face with clothing on a day-to-day basis so that I can refine and improve my collection.”

Kingston’s MA Fashion course director Andrew Ibi said his students were encouraged to think laterally and apply their design skills to a range of challenges set by industry partners. “Garfield has found a unique way of approaching this project combining focussed design with savvy business acumen”, Mr Ibi said. “His work is testament to the entrepreneurial thread that runs through the course”.

Garfield hopes his illustrations will eventually be turned into garments and make it on to the rails of clothing shops up and down the country.

The Art of Fact is a new exhibition from our students from BA (Hons) Illustration and Animation. The reportage exhibition is being hosted in Platform gallery, Knights Park Campus from the 30th April until the 10th May 2013.

The creative director and executive vice president of design for global fashion brand Banana Republic has been named an Honorary Doctor of Arts by his alma mater, London’s Kingston University. Speaking following the ceremony at Kingston’s Rose Theatre on 8 April, Simon Kneen credited the professional skills he developed while studying fashion at Kingston for being pivotal in helping shape his career.

To see this full story please vist:

http://www.kingston.ac.uk/news/article/865/09-apr-2013-top-banana-republic-executive-returns-to-alma-mater-to-receive-honorary-degree/

The MA Production Design for Film and TV held the Private View of their graduation show on the 21^st September. The exhibition is now regularly held in the Project Space at Knights Park campus as this  is ideally placed for designers – it is centrally located in relation to many film and TV studios – Shepperton, Pinewood, BBC TV Centre and Teddington to name a few. In attendance were many graduates from the last ten years of the course who are now out there working in the film and TV industry. The list of productions that graduates have been working on is extensive and varied  – but here are a few – ‘Inside Men’, designed by Anna Pritchard, ‘BBC Sports’ – designed by Peter Aston who was nominated for an RTS award for this innovative design, Tom Bravington ( who graduated only last year ) was credited as Art Director on the recently aired ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ and Chantelle Valentine has been working with award winning Production Designer Donal Woods on ‘Downton Abbey’ and the feature ‘My Week with Marilyn’. Other productions with grads credited range from Law and Order:UK to Ridley Scott’s ‘Prometheus’ and ‘The Dark Knight Rises. Links to the industry are reinforced by a team of visiting lecturers which includes Bafta winning designers Malcolm Thornton and Candida Otton.

As one visitor to the show commented ‘I keep bumping into other grads of the course all the time when I’m working!’

Work by Kingston University art and design students is about to start popping up all over London – from Brompton to Peckham and from the South Bank to the Canal Museum at King’s Cross.

Aficionados of the creative arts should keep their eyes peeled for unexpected displays by MA fine artists, product designers and curators. They may even be lucky enough to stumble across exhibits by students studying for MAs in communication design, film and television design, surveying and fashion.

The shows aim to highlight the value of a postgraduate qualification. “Our courses provide the space and time to pursue the question not the answer,” Kingston University’s course leader for MA Communication Design Ian Noble said. “The purpose of MA research is to achieve a better understanding of what is possible, effective and appropriate.”

Kingston University’s postgraduate courses also have a vocational focus. “At a time when the broadcasting industry is very hard to break into, our graduates have secured some enviable jobs,” course leader for production design for film and television Teresa Lawler said. “We have four former students working with Simon Jago, who designed the sets for the BBC and Channel 4 newsrooms, one is art director for Downton Abbey, one manages a large team on the Big Brother set and another was action prop buyer on Batman – The Dark Knight Rises and worked on Ridley Scott’s Prometheus.”

Kingston University is staging several separate MA shows this year:

• Students on the Curating Contemporary Design MA are staging a series of “super talks” at Tent London – one of the London Design Festival’s biggest shows. The talks will take place each day from 20 to 23 September, between 1.45 and 3.45pm. Guest speakers, including architect Will Alsop, designer Jurgen Bey and advertising expert Ed Gillespie, will be introduced and interviewed by Kingston students and each session will end with a short debate. 
• Elsewhere, work by Kingston University’s MA designers will go on public view during Vauxhall Fashion Scout, part of London Fashion Week. Their display is at Freemason’s Hall, Great Queen Street, Covent Garden on Monday 17 September at 6.30 pm.
• Product designers will be displaying their final projects at London’s Southbank Centre from September 20 to 23. The students’ ideas will form part of another major show, Designersblock 2012. The projects include Kuan Ting Liao’s intricate patterns made using functioning copper wire.
• Work by Kingston University’s graphic designers, illustrators and animators will be collected in a book – entitled Really – which will be launched at London’s Canal Museum between 6 and 9.30 pm on Thursday September 20. The book includes a powerful commentary on domestic violence by Pavlina Setta.
• Finally back on home turf, the graduation show for Kingston’s MA Production Design for Film and Television will be at Kingston University’s Knights Park campus from on Friday September 21. The campus’s project space will be open to the public from 22-27 September, 12-4 pm at weekends and 12-7 on weekdays.

 IMAGE: Tasia Lofitou (23, MA Communication Design) has used wine labels to try to promote the cultural heritage of her home village of Lofou in Cyprus.

 It may have been one small step for a man, but the lunar outfits worn by the first astronauts had a touch of the feminine about them too as a Kingston University fashion student discovered when she researched her final year fashion collection.

While strolling around the Science Museum in the heart of London’s cultural quarter, student Anna Collinson’s eye was caught by the iconic design of the puffy airtight space suits with their mirrored helmets.  She was even more intrigued, however, to find out that the first astronauts’ outfits of the 1960s had been designed by a subsidiary of a company more famous for a very different kind of gravity-defying garment – lingerie and well-known bra maker Playtex.

“I was attracted by this clash of ideas,” Anna, from Salford, said.  “Although women have been into space, I think of the idea of being an astronaut as very masculine. Yet here was a company renowned for making ladies’ girdles right at the heart of the whole lunar story. I just had to explore that further to make a fashion collection that brought these two worlds together.”

The six looks in Anna’s menswear collection combine the bulbous padding of the space suit with more subtle nods to the lace, trim and feminine detail of Playtex’s more famous lingerie. Straps reminiscent of suspender belts hang from two laser-cut lace-like shirts.  Meanwhile, a chunky puffed-up scarf surrounds the collar of another more astronomical-themed white jacket. “Imagining the air trapped inside a real space suit, I wanted to create something that had a lot of volume too,” the 22 year old explained.  “I took shapes from girdles and several of the garments include zips and panels – even a detachable mask that envelops the lower part of the face.”

Anna sourced a lot of the materials for her collection from Italy including cashmere and viscose jersey. “I’m really interested in the technology behind the fabrics and the functions of particular garments,” Anna added. “Now that I’ve finished my own collection, I’d really like to design for a sportswear company.”