This year’s LMA student fashion show to focus on body modification

Continuing an annual tradition, one of the central events in Latvia’s fashion scene—the Latvian Academy of Art (LMA) student fashion show—will take place next month, on 23 May, showcasing the young fashion designers’ most striking clothing collections. Whereas last year’s fashion show was a symbolic look back at what had been accomplished over 25 years, this year’s vision is directed towards the future, which is intended to be conveyed through dramatic interplay between light and darkness, with people at the very heart of it all. This time, the multifunctional “Riga Art Space” has been selected as the venue for the fashion show.

As usual, the LMA student fashion show will present both ready-to-wear garments and eccentric avant-garde outfits for women and men, characterising fashion as a versatile form of cultural and artistic expression, examining worldwide fashion trends, looking towards those of the future and giving free rein to the flight of creative ideas. The fashion show will feature the collections of students in the bachelor’s and master’s programmes of the Fashion Design subfield that the academy’s panel of lecturers will have deemed the most striking and promising at the beginning of May. Importantly, this year, for the first time, students’ work will also be assessed by experienced industry experts from Latvia and abroad. 

Since the concept underlying the upcoming clothing show is the search for being and truth, a movement towards the light of understanding, the student collections this year will likewise demonstrate an even more pronounced dismantling of the boundary between what appears right and wrong. This is intended to be achieved through vivid contrasts, body transformations, abstract forms and other elements of surprise, aptly complemented by the scenographic solutions of the space—its interplay of light and darkness, illuminated colour projections and the reality created by mirrors. The interplay of laconic white and black, which will alternately fill and inhabit the Riga Art Space, can also be seen in the visual identity materials for this year’s fashion show.

“LMA students are united by a high creative capacity, sensitivity to topical issues and the hope for the development of a fashion characteristic of us Latvians. This time, the collections focus on people—the creator of fashion, the user of fashion, and even the one who ignores it,” comments Māra Binde, head of the LMA Department of Fashion Art.

“Fashion is like a Ferris wheel—those at the zenith are doing well. Yet time passes, the wheel turns, and lucky are those who buy a ticket to board fashion!” adds LMA Rector Professor Kristaps Zariņš.

The author of the visual identity for the 2019 fashion show is graphic designer and design strategist Matīss Zvaigzne. This year’s scenographic solutions for the fashion show will be created by the widely acclaimed set and costume designer Berta Vīlipsone. Immediately after the fashion show, the young fashion designers’ collections will be on public display at the LMA clothing exhibition and showroom. Tickets for the fashion show have been available since 16 April on the website www.kurp.es.

News from the Department of Fashion and the development of the student collections can be followed on the LMA’s social media accounts, Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LMAfashion and Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lmamodesmaksla.

The fashion show is supported by the State Culture Capital Foundation and Riga City Council and organised by the Latvian Academy of Art.