Ingrid Kraftchenko - Going Underground

Ingrid Kraftchenko graduated from London College of Fashion in 2017 and having served a fashion apprenticeship with industry luminaries such as Margiela and Helmut Lang launched her eponymous label in 2019.

Hers is a vision which marries an impeccable grounding in tailoring with a desire to subvert the fashion norms, a desire that manifests itself in creations and collections which are insilled with a genderless and androgynous aesthetic. It's an aesthetic also inculcated with an environmental empathy which sees her creating pieces from discarded end of life deadstock. Unapologetically unafraid to push boundaries and challenge conventions Ingrid has received widespread acclaim for her avant-garde designs.

Ingrids A/W 23 collection "BODYMAP 23 (THE SUN IS ASH) showed on-schedule at London Fashion Week in February. It was staged in the atmospheric and achingly appropriate abandoned tube system which runs from deep below Southampton Row, underneath bustling Holborn, all the way down to the Thames. A perfect setting for an experience that screamed underground queer rave. For an adopted Holbornite the opportunity to attend a fashion show in this forgotten, subterranean warren also gave major geek factor satisfaction.

It was a collection that didn't disappoint. As an expectant and excited audience awaited a show which started fashionably late a pounding techno soundtrack heightened those queer rave vibes. When the impressively diverse cast of models, including to my surprise and delight my friend Diana, attacked the runway, those expectation levels were more than met.

Served to us in a colour palette of red and black, the pieces came in leather, sheer fabrics and a panoply of exquisitely intricate crochet and textiles. Structural silhouette met fetish wear in a collection that repositioned fashion as tribute to the dystopian and the utilitarian. Both immersive and subversive and taking inspiration from the current climate and those inescapable feelings of anger and euphoria that envelop so much of humankind, it also highlighted the meticulous attention to craftsmanship that Ingrid brings to all her work.

Imbued with the anarchic alchemy that lies at the core of everything Ingrid Kraftchenko does "BODYMAP 23 (THE SUN IS ASH) showed a designer redefining luxury for an audience who have rejected societal stereotypes of age and gender. A designer who has deconstructed and reformed our idea of what contemporary tailoring should look like and who has cast aside the outmoded constructs of gender-based clothing.

Ingrid Kraftchenko took us underground in more ways than one with her A/W23 collection and while we would never want her to aspire to the mainstream, hopefully this tour-de-force assemblage of pieces introduces the designer to many more like-minded humans who share her vision.