Georgia Hardinge A/W11 – London Fashion Week

Georgia Hardinge was part of “Ones to watch” last year, and has been chosen this season to represent the Vauxhall Fashion Scout Merit Award. She was presenting her work on the catwalk for the first time.

Her style is described as architectural and that’s indeed one of the most striking things about this Autumn/Winter 2011 collection. Entitled “Spined” and inspired from macabre photographs of Joel Peter Witkins, it actually revolved more about the construction of the human body, with strips of wool or leather folded and pleated underlining the structure of garments and, by extension, of the body, or in an even more obvious way, with the digital skeletal prints on bodycon dresses and tops.

The colour palette was exclusively of neutral tones, bone, blush, buttercream and black, as a reminder of the concepts behind the collection: death, mutation, disfiguration and anatomy. Far from scary though, the silhouettes are those of beautiful night birds or glamorous angels, with an amazing work on  volumes and structure, combining rigidity of the fabric with fluidity of shapes. I had the opportunity to take a closer look at the collection later on at the Vauxhall Fashion Scout Exhibition set at Freemason’s Hall, and was definitely seduced by the perfect cut and texture of all garments.

Georgia Hardinge is without a doubt one designer to watch!

Laurie Guillem