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 17th 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.
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