Black Magic, hand-me-downs and goth clowns: Ten CSM graduates to know

This week saw the Central Saint Martins Class of ‘24 unleash their final collections on the catwalk at the revered school’s shiny new King’s Cross campus, and, as ever, it was a riot. 

From big, bouncy baby dolls bopping down the runway in garish neon sequin offcuts, to slick, sophisticated collections that tapped into familial memories of Camerounian Black Magic – via an insane posse of clown goths, an offering that raided Topshop circa 2009 but still somehow ended up elegant, and an offering that clashed English football sensibilities with traditional Bangladeshi silhouettes – 2024 was wall-to-wall talent that was hard to narrow down to just a handful of favourites.

Still, despite adversity, we managed – here’s our list of graduates to watch as they emerge from CSM’s hallowed halls and enter the fashion melting pot.

Sarabande scholar Yodea Marquel’s collection drew inspiration from the seven elm trees planted around an old oak in Tottenham, which in turn gave their name to the area of Seven Sisters close by. Also called Seven Sisters, the designer’s final offering “Serves as a summoning that harnesses local folklore to narrate and honour the story of my community,” they explained.  This translated to wildly intricate interconnected structures strung with panels of woven fabrics, which grew out of the models shoulders and backs like wings. The pieces tip-toed between the organic and technological, with the def lacing seen throughout evoking the tangled roots of a plant, the veins and arteries that pump blood around the body, and the wires of a circuit board. 

“My collection was inspired by queer truck drivers and the extravagant aesthetics of the trucking industry,” says Ella Douglas of their final project. After writing their dissertation on the transgender truck driving community, the designer discovered through their research the correlation between fluidity, freedom, and motion within trucking, and uncovered a unique overlap between lesbian and truck driving aesthetics. 

If you’re thinking this would result in a series of heavy flannel shirts and shapeless jeans cutting it down the runway, you’d be wrong – the collection was a lot more cunty than that. Looking to your typical monster truck’s inner-workings as a starting point, Douglas debuted fierce glittering sheath dresses hand-studded with a casual 17,000 spikes, asymmetric gowns crafted from tartan fabric that evoked the curtains that separate the drivers’ sleeping quarters, and Velcro support bandages spun into savage pointy boots. Topping it off were trucker hats strung with Little Tree air fresheners that bounced in the models’ faces as they walked, and heavy duty mittens clutched in hands like they were silk opera gloves. 

Joining a host of other designers who delved into their upbringing and identity for inspiration, Tasnim Chowdhury looked to her sister and the flack she faced as a Bangladeshi girl playing football for fun in the early 2000s for her grad collection.

“Female football wasn’t nearly as prominent as it is now,” says Chowdhury. “Due to a lot of racism and discrimination she faced on the pitch, she decided to stop playing at 13 years old, but continued to be a longtime fan of the game. Seventeen years later, she’s playing football again and volunteering at the Arsenal women’s supporters club to break stigmas and barriers between culture and the game.” 

The idea developed to incorporate iconic markers from both her Bangladeshi culture and that of football, with bolshy-hued footie jerseys matched up with twisted takes on traditional South Asian clothing, like saris and lunghi drapes, some of which had been embellished with Kantha hand stitching. 

At any given CSM BA show, there are always a handful of collections that cause the audience’s typically stony faces to break into beaming smiles, and this year, Drew Kent’s was among them. Like big bouncing baby dolls won at the local fair, the designer’s models tramped down the runway in frou-frou, frilly dresses that sat somewhere between Little Bo Peep, Boots-procured bath pouffe, and your nan’s naff toilet roll cover in the 90s, wide-legged trousers and shrunken jumpers dotted with blousy, cartoon-like flowers, and all manner of floppy bonnets. 

Served up in a brilliantly garish palette of faded neons and zingy pastels, the whole thing took inspiration from the vibrant colours and textures of Kent’s childhood, and intertwined his childlike innocence with his personal queer journey in a bid to “embrace one’s true self”. Employing a zero-waste policy in his designs, Kent utilised Punchinella – otherwise known as sequin waste – and recycled yarns throughout, resulting in a conscious offering Kent calls “eco-fabulous”. 

Things took a turn to the dark side when Bartholomew Heritage sent a circus of models with painted, clown-like faces down the catwalk. The self-confessed goth, who began exploring a plethora of subcultures as a teen growing up in rural Cumbria, tapped into his identity to bring together Epi.taph, a collection which riffed on “Playfully reappropriated trauma, re-written autistic experiences, and obsessive tendencies”. 

This translated to a standout cocktail dress dotted with nightmarish faces, punk-inflected multi-layered gowns, slashed, sliced-and-diced tanks and trousers, panelled basques, and bastardised band tees, all of which looked like it had been put through the wringer ten times over. Finishing touches came via kitschy Hot Topic-style blood-stained ties, fetish-y flourishes in the form of dog collars, chunky chains, and wipe-clean latex overcoats, plus pieces stamped with ‘Epi.taph” – both the name of the collection, and Heritage’s brand going forward. “I just like the morbidity of it,” they explain. “It’s kind of gloomy and fits with me being a goth.” 

Eleanor Bathgate’s first model skulked down the runway, holding the lapels or her hulking wool coat closed at her chest having hoiked it over her head in the same way you might were you caught in a rainstorm unprepared. It made sense, then, that the designer intended to explore themes of protection and vulnerability within her final collection. “It’s a reflection of what it was like growing from a girl into a woman within a rural setting,” she explains of her upbringing in the Scottish Borders. 

Beyond the striking opening look, the designer’s offering expanded to include strapless gowns and sweeping skirts crafted from wool and upcycled leather offcuts accented with slices of slate. A kind of bittersweet love letter to her homeland, the heaviness of adolescence and journey through womanhood was personified in the heavy rocks the models carried down the catwalk. 

Jack Lambert looked through centuries of men’s clothing and pulled references from various historic periods to create New Visions in Menswear, but his final collection never veered into costume – instead, it felt fresh, contemporary, and subversive. 

“It’s kind of a timeline or greatest hits of men’s clothing,” says the designer, who goes by @clothesforidiots on Instagram. “From loincloths and shearling to high-tech nylon, it spans the biblical past right up to the innovation of modern, man-made fabrics, it’s also loosely based around a group of boys and men who obsess about antiquity and the life of Jesus.”

Were Jesus to be resurrected in 2024 with an eye for offbeat tailoring and tactile fabrications, it wouldn’t be a stretch to say he’d find a home in Lambert’s louche, slouchy tailoring, punchy little tabards, and boxy bowling bags and knitted sweater vests plastered with Scum slogans. 

Sam Friberg’s grad collection Pigeons was born from living in warehouses and squats across London, and the ways the designer and his friends would ransack the streets for bits and pieces to make furniture from.

“I applied it to clothing by using old industrial waste like tyres, inner tubes, cogs, and bike chains and turning them into textiles. The goal was no virgin materials,” he explains. Also on the line-up were slashed up old  military tents, which he dyed using food scraps from the CSM canteen, transforming them into utilitarian looks overlaid with heavy, hardcore hardware – one model stomped down the catwalk looking like a rusty knight in armour.

If it felt rageful, it was meant to: “It began as a reaction to how bad the living standard have become in the UK and how careless we are with the environment,” Friberg says. But it’s not all bad. Where there’s misery, there’s hope, with the collection also a calibration of innovation, DIY culture, and craftsmanship.

Rory Walmlsey is the youngest of four siblings and the baby of his family, so it makes sense that the designer is well acquainted with hand-me-downs. In fact, his grad collection is named exactly that, and riffs on his love of clothes that have gone well past being described as “neat” or “pristine”. “My brother was a big inspiration,” says Walmsley. “He’s ten years older than me and most of my hand-me-downs are from him. Growing up I would always look up to him in his skinny jeans and tattered hoodies as he went off to the skatepark or a house party. I wanted the clothes to feel a bit dated and trapped in a different era, to capture that youthful, grungy energy I used to look up to.” 

Sitting in a similar realm to Aaron Esh’s AW24 collection, Walmsley appeared to have raided the depths of Topshop’s sale section around the time the first season of Skins dropped, with mega-skinny, too-small jeans and trackies stuck halfway up the legs, and slashed hoodies hanging slack off the shoulders. There was an elegance throughout, however, largely in the skew-whiff tailoring and polos with cowl detailing to the rear, and the trompe-l’oeil-effect moulded detailing that captured the memory of studded belts and sunglasses.

The Central Saint Martins show is widely known to be berserk, with many students using it as an opportunity to go creatively mental before they have to knuckle down and get a real job (snore). Huguette Tchiapi’s collection, however, cut through the chaos with its slick, chic, louche tailoring and sophisticated colour palette.

The designer, who is of Camerounian heritage and travelled through the African region last year, conjured up memories of her parents sharing stories of Black Magic when she was younger, translating this to billowing gowns, fluid, wide-legged trousers, and slouchy tailored jackets.

Based around a series of written works and photographs she took while spending time in Cameroun, the collection utilised leftover fabrics, with Tchiapi looking to her tribe – the Bamileke people – to create traditional accessories including glass beaded necklaces and raffia clutch bags.