Creative Director: Eileen Gleeson

Photography: Jane Hilton  www.janehilton.com

Creative styling: Design Union team

Hair and Makeup: Natasha Lawes www.natashalawes.com

Beauty Is in the Street… the May 1968 Paris Uprising

The theme is protest.

In ’68, French students hurled cobbles from the pavement at the authorities and blockaded streets in revolt against stifling conservatism.

50 years on and the cumulative impact of war, destruction, living in fear coupled with austerity means that design and fashion will have no choice but to continue to express feelings of outrage, becoming empowered through protest.

Designers are making a democratising fashion, a counter culture of self-expression, stamped with a message to state the truth, demand equality and peace – fast forward the revolution.

The emphasis is on strong unabashed powerful pattern encompassing sportswear for the street, rebellious and taking no prisoners. Prints are loud and proud on functional fabrics, with a militant message. Broken pattern for a broken society -the proximity to chaos creates defiant choices of combinations in theme and colour.

Collage is dynamic, pieces fight for position; this unsettled feeling reflecting the cynicism we feel in a world we cannot trust. It doesn’t matter if we break the rules because everyone has changed direction and we will continue to rebound, moving from one extreme to another. Motives and marks are athletic, creating a strong gesture, feminist and free.

Pattern can be  psychedelic, idealist and drugged with colour, rejecting tradition and materialism; we decorate fabric with ornaments of mystical trips, a fanciful chimaera of flowers, something not real that somehow expresses our liberty.

There  is focus on South America and a Sandinista tropical camouflage. Printed slogans and  messages state positions – the lack of political representation is expressed in a universal language of fashion.