— November 16, 2009 —
In Fashion Incoming, Nobuko Tannawa styles the collections of the cream of recent fashion graduates and young designers, and asks them about their visions for the future.
Oden Wilson Styling by Nobuko Tannawa Photography by Billy Ballard
Oden Wilson, winner of the L'Oreal Professional Fashion Design Award for his Central St Martins A/W09 collection, showcased his version of couture fashion, but not in the established, theatrical, exaggerated mode. Instead, he created understated and perfectly chiselled shapes. His work reveals a strong design methodology, so it was unsurprising to find out that he has a passion for the physical processes of making, and for creating a meaningful aesthetic.
The garments are very well structured, like a 3D puzzle put together with mathematical precision – do you have to be good at maths to make those complicated patterns?
(Laughs) I enjoy maths but I’m not sure if I am that good at it! Before I started studying fashion, I had a brief career as a mechanical engineer. I had to use trigonometry to calculate the angles of cuts and chamfers – it was training that I never expected to serve me well again.
What’s your vision when designing?
I like things that look very artificial. I am drawn to odd shapes, smooth lines and changing the proportion of the body in a dynamic and streamlined way. I love creating interestingly cut and constructed clothes. I think I am very lucky to have found fashion! If I hadn’t, I would probably still be working in the same hands on way but as a carpenter or something. It’s the craft of fashion that I really love. It allows me to work in a direct way with the material, finding the physical limitations and pushing them. I try to produce a conventional garment in an unconventional way. A couple of other references are army surplus and couture: so it’s bold and directional, but has a surprisingly comfortable wearability and ease.
What was the concept for this particular collection? Why did you decide to use blue and champagne as the main colours at the end?
I only used three colours because I needed to keep the collection coherent, while trying to push proportion and shape. I decided very early on which fabrics were going to achieve the volumes I wanted, in an attempt to break away from that tight silhouetted collection that Christopher Kane made so famous at CSM. So the colours were key to the coherence… and I loved the blue and champagne combination! I thought it looked modern, clean and minimal. I developed a cutting concept inspired by origami to produce the huge geometrics, which I then gathered and collapsed around the body. The form of the shapes was controlled by a series of utilitarian drawstrings and hardware in the garments. That’s how I tried to make the couture context relevant and modern.
Credits:
Photography: Billy Ballard
Text and Styling: Nobuko Tannawa
All Clothes by Oden Wilson; Black tights by Wolford
Hair: Mari Ohashi using Kiehl’s
Make-up and manicure: Zoe Taylor using MAC
Re-touching: Regina Limon Vega
Model: Malene Knudsen @ Next
Photographic assistant: Rob Low
Make-up assistant Lauren Wall
Special Thanks to: Mark Loy Director of Spring Studios, Spring Lighting and Spring Digital
After assisting stylist Joanna Schlenzka for three years, Nobuko Tannawa is now a freelance fashion stylist. She grew up in Tokyo and New York
Billy Ballard grew up in the Midlands thinking he was going to be a scientist. He is currently living in East London, working as a freelance photographic assistant
