Each year the British Fashion Council (BFC) supports emerging talent through its BFC NewGen programme. For the year 2023, five new participants were selected to receive support as part of the initiative.
In addition to access to financial grants, they also receive presentation opportunities and individual mentoring sessions to help them develop their businesses. Many notable designers have participated since the program started in 1993, including Alexander McQueen, Bianca Saunders, Richard Quinn, Grace Wales Bonner and Kim Jones.
FashionUnited introduces the five new designers who have been added to the BFC NewGen list this year.
Aaron Esh
LVMH Awards finalist Aaron Esh puts redefining the meaning of menswear at the heart of his work. He challenges preconceived notions of masculinity in his collections, which also reflect his East London origins. Like many big-name menswear designers before him, Esh graduated from Central Saint Martins, a college he attended as an Alexander McQueen Scholarship winner. Since graduating, his work has been in the public eye and can also be purchased at various retail outlets, including Ssense.
Esh’s craftsmanship is evident in the technical execution of each garment. He’s known for being meticulous about fitting, often going through the process multiple times on the same model before finalizing the fit. His recent collection consists of deconstructed tailored suits, bubble mini skirts teamed with trousers and tapered outerwear styles.
derrick
Menswear designer Luck Derrick is the perfect candidate for the BFC program as he aims to offer a new perspective on British design with his Derrick brand. He graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2021 after learning his craft during an internship at Morton & Sons on Saville Row. He then set up his studio in East London, where he established his eponymous brand as “the canon of masculine chic”.
The designer later participated in London Fashion Week’s Discovery Lab, where he further cemented his brand’s identity, reinterpreting technical and sporty pieces with a wink. Derrick’s subsequent collections further reinforced this approach to design, combining humor with formal wear, while maintaining a special emphasis on craftsmanship and traditional tailoring for the new, young consumer.
Kazna Asker
Central Saint Martins graduate Kazna Asker’s eponymous brand offers her a platform to use fashion as a base for political activism. At her recent Central Saint Martins MA fashion show at London Fashion Week 2022, she was the first designer to take the school stage with a hijab collection, eventually earning her celebrity recognition from the BFC and leading fashion publications. Asker’s mission is to have her collection represent both her home country of Yemen and her community in Sheffield, where she grew up and is involved in a range of community projects.
Her designs reflect this mission, with garments that blend athletic wear and traditional Middle Eastern silhouettes such as the jilbab and caftan (thobe), each using waterproof fabrics and practical details. Her debut collection, which includes both men’s and women’s clothing, also featured cargo pants and tracksuits combined with traditional fabrics. Selection into the BFC’s NewGen program isn’t the first recognition Asker has received: in 2022 she was awarded the ‘Debut Talent Prize’ at the Fashion Trust Arabia Awards, where she was celebrated for her work with the community.
The Winter House
Gender-neutral jewelery brand The Winter House takes inspiration from London, which they see as a fundamental part of their aesthetic. This is reflected in the rough, sculptural and surreal jewellery, which in large part references barbed wire, weeds on the sidewalks and natural forms that are part of the cityscape. Founder Liam Winter describes his working process as follows: “When I design a piece of jewelry whose sole purpose is to exist for our aesthetic pleasure, I like to imagine how it would defend itself from our gaze… Such as itself a rose defended with its thorns.”
In its first year, The Winter House has already attracted a number of well-known personalities and artists among its fans, including Steve Lacy, Lourdes Leon, Lacey Foux and Kojey Radical. The brand also presented its first collection at the Tranoï showroom during Paris Fashion Week in January 2023, while the next collection is already in the works.
Tolu Coker
Tolu Coker is not only a fashion and textile designer, but also an illustrator and multidisciplinary artist. The British-Nigerian designer founded her eponymous brand in 2018 after graduating from Central Saint Martins and has since used her platform to explore the politics of identity, social climate and societal issues. The London-based designer made her Fall/Winter 2019 fashion week debut with her debut collection, Juvenile Consciousness. This was shown during London Fashion Week after winning the Fashion Scout Merit Award. Fusing streetwear and couture, her designs, for both menswear and womenswear, are often made from old jeans and textile scraps that are repurposed into new materials.
At other collections, she has used her place in fashion for a good cause, as evidenced by her 2020 collection, where she collaborated with charity Choose Love and designed a t-shirt that honors the communities she worked with during her stay in Rwanda was in contact. All proceeds from the t-shirts were donated to the charity. Coker and her work have received multiple awards including being part of the ‘Drapers 30 Under 30’ 2021 list and at the ‘International Talent Support’ (ITS) 2018 ceremony where she received the Diesel Award, the Vogue Talents Award and the ITS Time for Coffee Award received.
This article originally appeared on FashionUnited.uk. Translated and edited by Simone Preuss.