Charlotte Helyar Spring Summer '13

One thing is for sure, the collection from Charlotte Helyar makes her stand out from her Central Saint Martins classmates; it is a collection that immediately makes you want to find out what it is all about and what inspired such an interesting collection. White blank canvas garments, none the less impeccably cut, are printed with fascinating, optical illusion prints that play tricks on the eyes.

 With a passion for screen printing, Charlotte is inspired by trying to find new techniques and results from different methods of print design. “I am really inspired by analogue graphics and 80's album artworks and early iD magazines”, this shows clearly in the collection; although the garments are cut in a very modern and almost futuristic way, the prints give a clear nod to previous decades through their colour use and almost psychedelic nature. In line with this, Charlotte pushed traditional methods of printing; all of the prints are hand-printed using the CMYK colour system and by printing in dots that overlap each other and consequently create some really interesting effects.

It is impressive that, from a distance, the prints look fairly digital and you would not initially assume that they were printed by hand. You cannot see the pixels until you are right up close to the garments, which is fascinating as collections are best when they develop in your mind and you look further into them. Even though they look digital, the printed motifs are inspired by 17^th century artworks, which have a real contrast with the block colour shapes and letters on the garments. The hand-printing technique allowed Charlotte to play with print in a way that you cannot do digitally, printing over folds and seams to distort them even further. There is no visible stitching on the garments, the edges of the fabric are not finished and are cut in very geometric lines, but this allows the fascinating prints to speak for themselves and this attention to not overdoing things and creating the perfect balance within a collection is no doubt what has impressed so many people. Central Saint Martins are renowned for encouraging their students to find their own niche and something that they are passionate about and it seems that this is what Charlotte has done.