Professor Jimmy Choo’s Mayfair based JCA | London Fashion Academy recently hosted its debut London Fashion Week City Wide MA show featuring five designer entrepreneurs, alongside JCA’s Designer in Residence, Patrick McDowell. JCA | London Fashion Academy is a fashion school and professional incubator, founded by Professor Jimmy Choo OBE and Stephen Smith.
Showing first, British fashion designer, Patrick McDowell, unveiled his latest collection Marie Antoinette goes to Liverpool, merging the uncanny world of Marie Antoinette with his own Liverpudlian background. Opening the MA Show, Noon Khouri presented her nomadic, inclusive and up-cycled denim brand Angels Wear Nada, followed by Melissa-Kate, who showcased For the Love of Venus PT.III, the third capsule in a three-part, year-long series which delves into the spirituality, symbolism and conspiracies behind the planet Venus. Afterwards, Annabelle Barton presented Size-A, a luxury womenswear brand born from the desire for creatively designed, luxury clothes that can fit a range of petite women, followed by Sophie Park showcasing the first collection of her eponymous plant-based gender-neutral footwear brand that fuses whimsical Wes Anderson-esque symmetry with the ambiguous silhouettes seen often in the work of Rei Kawakubo, according to a press release by JCA.
Patrick McDowell’s collection comprises 30 looks and draws from lighter pastel palettes that reflect Marie Antoinette’s preference for youth and femininity and strong bold shots of yellow and black. In ‘Marie Antoinette goes to Liverpool’ the designer experiments with varying proportions of waspy waistlines and bouffant skirts, blending these classic silhouettes with modern Liverpudlian twists. The prints from this collection have been created from family pictures of MacDowell, his mother and grandmother in their childhood years, drawing on the element of personal storytelling that is integral to his design practice.
The JCA MA Graduates in fashion entrepreneurship in design and brand innovation showing their collections included Angels Wear Nada - an inclusive up-cycled denim brand, collaborative art project and experimental event space founded by Noon Khouri; Melissa Kate - a demi-couture label that mixes themes of Hollywood Glamour, rock’n’roll and spirituality to create the look of the modern pin-up; Size-A - a uniquely designed label for petite women by Annabelle Barton; and Sophie Park - a plant based, gender-neutral footwear brand bringing a range of innovative designs and ideas to the market.
“Our London Fashion Week show has been a momentous occasion for us all at the JCA. Since officially opening our doors only one year ago in September 2021 we have nurtured our first graduating MA cohort from our home on Hanover Square. Opening our doors to the public one year on has been the perfect moment to celebrate the successes of these hugely talented designer entrepreneurs as they launch their new brands: Size-A, Melissa-Kate, Angels Wear Nada, Maryam Orchid and Sophie Park,” Stephen Smith, founder and CEO of the JCA, said.
