DRESSED FOR IMPACT

There is something rather reassuring about a designer who isn’t interested in making clothes behave themselves.

Yuma Shih-Yuan Hsu, a graduate of London’s Royal College of Art, works somewhere between precision and impulse. Leather is folded, wrapped and allowed to fall; tailoring provides the discipline, then seems to loosen its tie halfway through. The result is clothing that feels constructed without looking overworked, and dramatic without the usual theatrics.

Hsu’s silhouettes have weight to them. Shoulders broaden, layers overlap and familiar garments are shifted just far enough from their usual proportions to become something else entirely. In the images here, leather is less biker uniform than armour: oversized, softened and almost enveloping. Beneath it, the grey shirt is deliberately ordinary, which makes the whole thing better. Too much fashion can occasionally be fatal to fashion.

What makes Hsu interesting is the tension. There is craftsmanship, particularly in the treatment of leather and tailoring, but it isn’t displayed like a technical exercise. Instead, structure is interrupted by instinct. Hard materials become fluid; careful construction produces something unexpectedly raw.

Graduate collections are often spoken about in terms of potential, a slightly patronising word that suggests everyone should come back in ten years. Hsu’s work already has a point of view. And in fashion, where an alarming amount of clothing currently appears to have been designed by the same very tasteful committee, a point of view is worth paying attention to.

"I’m drawn to irregularities in objects, textures, and the body, translating those tensions into layered garments that balance control with chaos, softness with edge,"