ArtEZ’s 2011 Fashion Masters Graduates

Whether they go on to work at Viktor & Rolf and Louis Vuitton or scrape together the crazy amount of money it takes to launch a solo line, nearly all clothing-design talents make their first identifiable mark of genius on the fashion world during end-of-the-year graduation shows. Sure, after a year of monomaniacal focus — at least double what any designer ever gets in the real world — the concepts are usually completely overthunk and overwrought, as student work in every discipline tends to be. But without the constraints of the market or a demanding boss, in some ways there can be no purer expression of creative perspective than when designers send that first exaggeratedly proportioned dress or gender-bending jacket down the runway. With that in mind, Sight Unseen made it a point to be there when Generation 12 of the ArtEZ Fashion Masters program opened the doors to their final presentation last week, during the Arnhem Mode Biennale. Consisting of Hanna Siwecki, ZhengZheng Li, Nick Rosenboom, Yona van Mansfeld, and Jonathan Christopher, the class kicked things off with a specially commissioned video lookbook of sorts by the amazing Dutch photographer/stylist duo Freudenthal/Verhagen, who were handed the students’ clothes and told to go wild (they did). Check out excerpts from the collections themselves in the slideshow at right, including backstories and inspirational images, then be sure to click here to watch the video.

Photo credits: Allard Honigh (Siwecki), Louise te Pouele (Rosenboom), Jasper Abels (van Mansfeld)