“Welcome to Untold, a collaboration of newly emerging designers and creatives, all of whom have encountered the same barriers when venturing into the big wide world of design  untold talent, yet no platform.” - Untold Catalogue

Twice a year, Fashion Week’s ethereal doctrine dictates the tastes and styles for seasons to come.

Lumped together, Autumn/Winter 2010 is readily told by the cast of London Fashion Week: who to wear, what to wear, and how to wear it - but who’s doing the telling?   Adjacent to the utra-high fashion set in West-Central London’s setting of LFW headquarters at Sommerset House is an opening for amateur and Do-It-Yourself status budding designers. The “Untold” is a collective for designers and creatives that have limited access to entering the competitive world of high-fashion. This is a story that’s universal for any aspring fashion designer, but the Untold collaboration focuses on designers with backgrounds that classify them as “underprivileged.” It may lean the story in one direction, but it also makes it more interesting.

At the 6th exhibition of the Untold collection,  the catwalk isn’t illuminated with grand overtures, just a simple plexiglass background and plain white sheet that looks a little bit like oversized wax paper.  The venue is certainly “quirky” as the curators aspire, but maybe it’s not the most strategic choice placed well out of the LFW venue circuit. Judging by the audience -most attendees are families and friends vs. high profile fashion recuriters - this is a more welcoming affair, and it’s more conducive to creating collections that are akin to personality versus obscure social references for the sake of social reference. The space is fitting for this purpose - happening in South London’s alternative art space - Battersea Arts Centre known for it’s one off alternative arts scene and diverse crowd.

While the LFW parties may happen more up north, the voices from this part are ready to speak up, albeit with more of a bare bones attitude, and a much smaller budget.  It all means that edge is more accurately defined as a personal position versus obsession of trying to play into displays of catwalk superiority.

In this sense, the clothes shed some of their arthouse attitutde and seem to be more accessible. Nothing seems too arthouse - even if all the designers are newly minted art/fashion school graduates - except for some reinterpreted imagery from menswear label Ma:LE, playing too much on experimentation of the recycled bohemian weekend variety. The designers all step out at the end as is custom to wrap up a season’s collections. It’s all a little new, beaming smiles but bent as endearingly camera shy.

Of note, Lana Luk’s creation, a newly minted graduate from the London College of Fashion, has successfully merged many of the most emphasised stylistic fashion choices of this season - high sholders, futuristic cuts and colours, sailor stripes - and remodelled it for the Untold stage.

Vintage refashioning, eco-fabrics, and ethnic and “tribal” overtones are most definitive of the collections, which speak to the diverse backgrounds of some of the designers. The cheerful Chichia London line is exemplary, taking bold African cotton textiles that have hit the mainstream fashion stage in a big way over the last few years,  for her reinterpreted and modernised retro clothes. Popping with colour and feminine bursts, the clothes are all very wearable and she seems like she has a good handle on what the market wants. Chichia mentions that she collects all of the fabric in her native Tanzania and gets the designs made locally - highlighting another ‘back to the roots’ story that seems to be so prominent in contemporary fashion.

Chichia highlights how important ventures like Untold are to young designers who aren’t getting the exposure they would like, and that the smaller, more intimate feel of the production delivers a more personal and familial feeling, while the simultaneous programming during LFW’s events provide the platform that young designers desire.

Talent can’t shine alone for a rising star. Bright lights, big cameras, expensive make up artists - these supposedly aren’t for amateurs. Even as burgeoning creativity is ready to trim the seams, there are elements that fade out in the cut. But an initiative like Untold brings the attention back to the core - the creatives who have a story and the need to share it.