This Fashion Student Stitched FKA Twigs Flyers, Tickets, and Even Her Face Into Her Final Collection – Vogue

If you’re a fashion design student in the U.K., chances are that FKA Twigs’s singular, yet distinctly British sense of style bears at least some influence on your creative practice. The singer-songwriter pulls sartorial references from an expansive timeline, one that starts in 18th century high society London (as is evident in her Vivienne Westwood collection) and ends in the halcyon days of New York City’s club scene at the turn of the century (which is on full display in one of her recent Instagram ’zines). For University for the Creative Arts Epson student Eden Russell, though, Twigs plays more than a peripheral role in her design process. In fact, Twigs’s likeness features front and center in the graduate student’s final collection, which she presented as part of London’s Graduate Fashion Week a few days ago.

In researching artist Romare Bearden, who Russell says influenced her work, she delved into black culture as represented by historical and contemporary figures as diverse as Malcolm X, Josephine Baker, James Brown, Frederick Douglass, and yes, FKA Twigs, whose face is printed on a standout blue knit sweater. “Each outfit represents a well-known black leader,” Russell explained over email following the show. “The outfits are contemporary fashion looks inspired by the iconic staple wardrobe of the time that these leaders were living in.” For Malcolm X, this translates to an oversize suit jacket, and for Twigs, Russell crocheted and stitched together secondhand vintage jumpers, which she paired with pants made from digital prints of Twigs’s concert flyers and tickets that she collaged together. Twigs might have already been fashion royalty, but now she’s the direct face of the industry’s sustainable vanguard itself.

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