A week in fashion and politics

Photographer: Lucy Feng. Models: myself and Nina Server

What a week! There was the momentous GE on Thursday 8th June, Graduate Fashion Week ending on Wednesday 7th June, and another visit to the V&A to admire the wonderful Balenciaga, accompanied this time by the beautiful  and talented model/photographer Lucy Feng, for whom I have modelled, and whose gorgeous  photographic work , inspired by the tale of Rapunzel and Lady Gothel, was published by AfterNyne magazine in its recent issue.
The election was a great step forward. It was wonderful to see that young people voted en masse for change and it is exhilarating to know that there is hope for the future.
GFW was a good experience, too. I could not help being bowled over by the work of many young designers, especially  Zexi Yu from Kingston University.
Chinese designers and Asian designers overall are the next big thing, demonstrating yet again that fashion is global and the hierarchy of fashion capitals is being disrupted. Asian fashion is vibrant, as I indeed discovered during my stay in Indonesia in 2015.

One of the collections presented at GFW at the 'Best of Graduate Fashion Week'

Only last week  I had the opportunity to model for a designer from Shanghai, Robyn, for her lookbook, which was shot here in London. It is not the first time I have modelled for an Asian designer - I was involved in  Tri Handoko's  IPMI trend show in Jakarta in Dec 2015 - and hopefully, not the last.  Asian designers have the advantage of being able to rely on exquisite, centuries old textile traditions which they take the trouble to study in depth, at the same time honing their skills at international fashion design schools. The results can be quite breathtaking.
European  fashion design has often taken from the East, anyway. The Eastern inspiration could  be seen for example at the Balenciaga exhibition. The great couturier designed the 'sari dress' (in the exhibition cleverly paired with a reproduction of one of the works by the Indian 19th century painter Raja Ravi Varma, whom perhaps Balenciaga admired) and also by Chinese art, creating clothes which exhibited Chinese motifs and a traditional  Chinese dress neckline.

One of Robyn's designs, modelled by me.

Finally,  not necessarily off the tangent, I would like to mention the great article by Alyson Walsh which appeared in The Guardian on 8th June (yes, election day). Walsh is also the author of the blog That's not my age.
Entitled "The salt and pepper pound. Where are all the fiftysomething models" , Walsh's article  nailed the issue. It's not right to have the whole of the over 40s represented by a few token 70 and 80 year-old celebrities/famous models. I mean, the models are great, individually, but the point is that each decade is different and older people are as diverse as younger ones. There is more or less twenty years that separate me from an 80 year old. Twenty years is a huge gap. An 80 year old model cannot represent me. The people who make such decision are in their twenties and thirties and clearly they are not able to grasp that there is a difference.
So thank you, Alyson Walsh, for pointing this out.