Fashion: New kids on the frock

• Glasgow School of Art Fashion students with their creations for the Fashion show L to R Karen Mess, Katie Charleson and Helen Gilchrist. Picture: Robert Perry

WE'RE smack in the middle of fashion week season, and as has come to be the norm over the past few years, the Scottish contingent is a force to be reckoned with. From Christopher Kane and Jonathan Saunders in the big leagues to emerging talents Holly Fulton and Louise Gray, Scottish designers are leading the way.

Many such designers – including Gray and Saunders – found their footing on the first rung of the ladder on the Glasgow School of Art's famous textiles course, and while the fashion world is preoccupied with Paris Fashion Week, which kicks off today, the third year textiles students at the GSA have a fashion show of their own to worry about.

The annual undergraduate fashion show will be staged next Tuesday and Wednesday evenings and has been a fixture on Scotland's fashion calendar since the 1940s.

To mark the centenary of the Mackintosh building, students have been encouraged to draw their inspiration from the GSA archives, creating not only the garments themselves, but also the textiles from which they are constructed.

Each student has put together three separate outfits, and money raised will go towards helping them to show their final degree work at the "New Designers" graduate launch pad event in London.

Head of the fashion and textiles department, Jimmy Stephen-Cran, said: "The show promises to be as sassy and energetic as ever but more importantly this student-led event offers students first-hand experience of the professional world.

"The organisation and production of the show is entirely their collective responsibility, allowing them to develop the team working, multi-tasking and transferable skills they will use time and time again in future careers."

In the run-up to next week's show, it's all sleepless nights, frantic deadlines and napping at the sewing machine, but three of the course's most promising students found the time to talk us through the design process, and discuss their inspirations, creations and hopes for the future.

Weaving flights of fancy without boundaries

HELEN GILCHRIST, 21, from Shropshire, is a weaver who has found her inspiration in air travel. After photographing a freestyle aeroplane display, she began to think about borders and boundaries, and the contrasts between the freedom and spontaneity of freestyle flying and the regimented nature of commercial flight. "I looked at both the repetitive shapes and lines of a commercial aircraft and the freestyle smoke of the other aeroplane," she explains. "So this was either side of the idea of borders and boundaries."

She began the design process by enlarging photocopied images of her weave structures and pinning the paper to mannequins. Using a colour palette taken from a piece of clothing from the GSA's archives, she explored the contrasts between order and chaos via her aeronautical theme.

Textiles are woven with a repeat aeroplane pattern, such as commercial aircraft lined up neatly in a hanger. This fabric is used on a simple jacket with a fur collar. This is contrasted with pieces exploring the more spontaneous nature of flight, with tiny aeroplane-shaped buttons on a neutral background featuring plumes of fluffy "smoke" snaking their way up the body of an A-line dress. Other pieces include a top featuring a parachute pattern and a jumpsuit.

Passionate about the construction of textiles, she cites her influences as "old-school" designers including Gianni Versace and Coco Chanel, as well as the sort of old-fashioned domesticity that can be found in the retro prints by Cath Kidston.

"I really like the construction of materials and it was a toss up for me between weave and embroidery because I'm interested in using embroidery not just as embellishment but as construction," she says. "I decided to do weaving because I could control the construction of the fabric."

Building on most brutal of architectural inspiration

KATIE CHARLESON, 21, from Crieff raided her old dressing-up box and looked to her mother's and grandmother's wardrobes to create romantic pieces that smack of faded old family photographs and the costumes worn by Keira Knightley in The Edge of Love.

However, despite their softness and ethereal femininity, much of her inspiration came from a trip to St Peter's seminary in Cardross, the 20th century brutalist masterpiece designed by Gillespie, Kidd and Coia.

"I took a lot of photographs and did a lot of drawings at Cardross and a lot of my inspiration came from the shapes in the architecture," she explains. "But then those graphic shapes developed into sketchier lines and heavy, vibrant colours became softer. Where the last project I worked on was a bit more crayon, this is about painting. I wanted this to be more romantic, watered down, a softening. Very painterly and kind of like looking through your granny's box of treasures."

Charleson, who specialises in print and idolises designers including Dries Van Noten and Miuccia Prada, uses a vintage colour palette to create beautiful abstract forms that retain an architectural bent despite their softness.

Brickwork on a lighthouse in Harris provided the inspiration for a sketchy print on a pair of trousers with an almost child-like freehand quality. Colour is used sparingly but cleverly, with rose pinks or grey blues on silky backgrounds the colour of faded vintage camisoles.

"I think that the shapes of the tops really do remind me of little camisole tops that my gran used to wear under piles and piles of jumpers," she says with a laugh.

"I've taken to wearing a lot of old camisole tops too now, and honestly, I ended up designing stuff that I wanted to wear."

Textiles in touch with the past

Specialising in knitwear, 21-year-old KAREN MESS from East Kilbride looked to archive images from the Fifties and Sixties for inspiration, focusing on work by the photographer Philip Townsend. One particular image of a body-con maxi dress caught her eye. "I was interested in the contrast between oversized, slouchy pieces and a tight-fitting maxi-dress," she says. "Mainly I've gone for oversized shapes on things like collars and sleeves. Basically I was trying to combine new textiles with old shapes."

The central piece in her trio of outfits is a black jacket with an upright collar and bold mint-green sleeves in a light knit overlaid with heavier felting in a graphic cut-out repeat pattern. "I used a lambswool which felts really nicely, and I used that in combination with normal knit, layering it all up to see the contrast between heavy and sheerer knits," she says.

Citing Alexander Wang, pictured, Elie Saab and Scottish sensation Christopher Kane as her influences, Mess is considering undertaking a masters degree after a move to London to gain more experience in the industry. "Textiles is definitely what I want to stay with, but I'm thinking of taking a year out just to get experience," she says.

"Scottish textiles is a very strong industry at the moment, and has a very prominent stage at the moment within Britain and further afield. It's important that continues to be nurtured."