A change of scene for Central Saint Martins

From Gilbert & George to Stella McCartney, Central Saint Martins has trained the country’s coolest artists and designers, but can it retain its radical edge now it is moving out of Soho and into King’s Cross? In a studio that reeks of chemicals above London’s Charing Cross Road, a small group of second year students are putting on a fashion show with a twist. Danish designer Henrik Vibskov , who is wearing voluminous black trousers and unsuccessfully trying to open the window, has commissioned them to express the concept of a panopticon prison through the medium of menswear. Two young men stand motionless in front of a screen. One is wearing trousers in violently clashing prints and a hat that looks like it was made of broken white clay pipes; the other has donned a baggy navy jumper with a ochre splodge on it. A short film is projected over them that goes from black-and-white close-ups of a male nude to threatening psychedelic fuzz. They’re “clothes for a distorted body”, explain the students, pointing to bits that stick out at the elbow and the knee. Christopher New, head of BA fashion menswear, admires the jumper’s intricate weave and asks about the meaning of the yellow blob. “Sometimes we do classic tailoring as well,” he tells me, moving on to the next group of students, whose interpretation of the panopticon concept involves the recreation of a rave in the college’s basement. This is Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (CSM), which for decades has been the place where Britain’s brightest young creatives have come to develop their talents (it evolved into its present incarnation in 1989, when the Central School of Art and Design merged with Saint Martins School of Art). It was at Saint Martins that Gilbert met George in 1967 , the Sex Pistols played their first ever show in 1975 and Jarvis Cocker met the Greek girl who “had a thirst for knowledge” and inspired Pulp’s Common People . In the mid-80s, the Charing Cross Road building became renowned as the furnace in which the world’s leading fashion designers were forged, a reputation that persists to this day. Sarah Burton and Riccardo Tisci , 2011′s most talked-about designers, both studied here, as did Alexander McQueen and John Galliano , the men they replaced (or are poised to, in Tisci’s case) at McQueen and Dior. A list of other CSM alumni would take up the rest of this article, but includes such cutting-edge artistic talents as Polly Harvey , MIA , Sade , Mike Leigh , Lucian Freud , Frank Auerbach , Jonathan Saunders and three-quarters of the Clash . This week marks the end of an era, as CSM leaves its two buildings in central London and moves to a new premises in King’s Cross, just across the road from the Guardian. The move won’t be welcomed by Professor Louise Wilson, legendary course director of MA fashion, who believes that the very grottiness of the Charing Cross Road building has helped drive her students – from McQueen to Christopher Kane – to succeed. “You feel that you’re better than this corridor,” she says. “In the new building you want to hide. All our secretaries loved it when they saw it and I thought: ‘Yeah, you would.’ I

Posted by on June 23, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.