Edward Cuming is the kind “if you know, you know” designer what fashion -folk likes to talk about as their latest, shiny discovery. And in a sense he is; Cuming’s clothing only recently entered the fashion-seageist-the street style galleries of Vogue Runway even, even though the Australian designer has been working on it since 2019. His status under the radar has so far to deal with the fact that he is located in Madrid and has kept his clothes off the runway. Although he holds a MA in men’s clothing from Central Saint Martins, he took the slow job to build his brand while freelancing and fashion teaching on the side, and that has helped to make his clothes, such as Kooky and exuberant and playful like They are, as they are, you also feel solved.
“You never wonder what the thing is,” the designer said this effect. He spoke about his more unconventional machinations: a striped sweater with his zoom disconnected and draping his sides, an overcoat with Raglan Kimono-Mouwen and a balloon front body that cinches at the upper thigh to create a poir-like cocoon shape. Cuming’s clothing has a nostalgic fame; One of his signatures is to make the most recognizable things feel strange and hospitable at the same time.
There is also a frankness in Cuming’s work – that is the contemporary side of his aesthetics. It is the most obvious in a series of excess silky-like separates: a dress, a skirt, a button-down. The technique consists of applying panels of tonal frayed fabric to a normal body for a kind of trompe l’Oil slashing effect. “I think she has reached the end of the road,” he said about the motive, “how much more can I add?” But in the words of Mean girls‘Lindsay Lohan, the limit does not exist – or that should not. The fabric collaging from cuming is completely too nice for him to store it now.
He said his goal this season was to raise some of his design signatures, his circular appliqués, who seams inside out and to apply them to “more evening” looks. This is where the eye of cuming for substances should not be overlooked. The obvious striking is a green -blue jacquard with scattered coral flowers that are used on a great jacket and matching skirt and capri pants. But pay attention to the charming dotted jacquard of a men’s suit (cut with a double breasted with a high break, a wide lapel and somewhat too long sleeves with hanging pants-pretty great). He sewed a carpet-like flowers in a few inside-out jeans and left the seams to fray, and used “very disco” (his words) silver sequins for a few capris-the silhouette is the big bet of this season, this season, and it’s quite convincing.
Cuming has a way to inject modernity and punkkiness into fabrics and silhouettes that would otherwise be outdated it is a neat skill to possess as shoppers of his generation that chases everything vintage and vintage. His taste for eccentricity was balanced here by a dose of pragmatism that made a fun but portable collection here. Perhaps undoubtedly, he called it ‘growing up’.