Pt.8 Craig Green
On May 22nd, LVMH will announce the winner of their 2015 Young Fashion Designer Prize from a pool of 8 finalists – Arthur Arbesser, Coperni, Craig Green, Faustine Steinmetz, Jacquemus, Marques’Almeida, Off-White, and Vetements. Started in 2013, the prize was launched to champion standout talent and foster their labels. Winning means getting a seal of approval from a jury of fashion’s foremost designers and industry professionals like Nicolas Ghesquiere, Marc Jacobs, Karl Lagerfeld, and LVMH’s own Delphine Arnault. Aside from being recognized by the industry, the winner receives a 300,000 euro grant and a year’s worth of expert support from the foundation. Of course, success in the industry for these designers isn’t reliant on winning, but it certainly sets the stage.
Presenting Models.com’s exclusive week-long spotlight on each of the designers in anticipation of their final presentation at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris and the announcement of the winner on May 22nd.
The LVMH 8
Photography: Steven Yatsko for Models.com
Stylist: William Graper @ The Wall Group
Art Direction: Stephan Moskovic
Hair: Takayoshi Tsukisawa
Makeup: Kim Weber
Production: Jazmin Alvarez
Photo assistant: Jason Acton
Manicurist: Natalie Pavloski @ LMC Worldwide
Portrait courtesy of the designer
Text by Jonathan Shia
Model:
Martin Conte / DNA Models
One year ago, Craig Green was just another designer preparing for his first solo runway show. A month later, he was the most buzzed-about début at London Collections Men, with a collection that Style.com called a “fashion moment.” And today, he is the only candidate for the LVMH Prize who designs only menswear. “It is always nerve-wracking before any show,” he says of his preparations twelve months ago for the fresh start that got him everyone’s attention, “and I think the simplistic and stripped-back nature of the collection gave me a feeling that the collection might not be at all well-received. It felt like a new proposal and a new way of moving forward for us as a label, but the change was an uneasy one.”
Green first came to Central Saint Martins—notice a pattern here?—planning to study fine art, but ended up switching to fashion design. “I always just loved to make things, and it felt like art and sculpture were definitely the route I should take when I first enrolled at CSM on the foundation course,” he recalls. “I think it was the fast pace and the different energy that made me veer off into a fashion route.”
That diversion has resulted in a designer whose confidence in his own unique vision is clear. For Spring 2015, he pulled from his favorite idée fixe to produce a collection that was unlike anything else being shown on the runways that week, one that asked and answered new questions about silhouette, form, and construction. “The basis of all the collections since my graduation in 2012 has been based around ideas of uniform and workwear,” he explains. “Each season the collection contains the trademark workwear jacket, reappropriated in a different form. The Spring 2015 collection, amongst other ideas, was based around the central idea of a flat-pack garment concept. The pieces could be constructed and taken apart with the use of string laces.”
Those tied-up designs have even made their way to the Met, where they are currently showcased as part of the blockbuster “China: Through the Looking Glass” exhibit, but Green says he is still taking it a step at a time. His legions of female fans would be smart to lobby the LVMH panel on his behalf, however. “It is an incredibly life-changing thing for my business at this stage,” he says of the possibility of winning. “I still have an extremely small team and limited resources, much like any young brand, so to be given the support, it will allow us to explore other avenues such as womenswear.”
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