Cassey Gan autumn/winter 2018 collection presentation for LFW

Based upon Maria Svarbova’s lifelike, well-painted photograph series Swimming Pool, Casey Gan’s Picture Perfect collection took the clean lines and abstract shapes of the photos and moulded them to create an innate tension between what is real and the fake.

Visual aspects of Svarbova’s photographs, such as water ripples, have been transfigured into items of clothing that, while seemingly busy, are on closer inspection, minimal. From a distance, colourful repeated patterns – used in blocks of fabric throughout garments – are blurred. Up close, it’s a different story, the prints are made up of abstract blocks, leaving one questioning what they’d seen previously.

Curved cuts of fabric have been adapted to make the viewer question reality. One mid-length skirt has a split down the side, which despite first sight, has waved edges. It is this discourse of innovative garment cutting which makes the questioning of reality and fiction so resolute. These curves help too to break up what otherwise would be boxy cuts, along with detachable layers and shapes that converge to connote how perceptions change.

The inspiration of Svarbova’s Swimming Pool series is directly correlated, not only through the brush-stroke prints that have been digitally created, but through the colour palette also. Bright blues of varying hues, white and the occasional shot of red and yellow punctuated throughout represent the necessity of checking one’s true self. The photographs are set amongst brutalist Slovak architecture are referenced in the clean white tiled boxes upon which models stand and their expressionless features.

Cassey Gan’s collection is a reminder to all that in this age of social media, questioning what you perceive as reality is essential.

Ellie Oaten
Photos: Huw Jenkins