- Words Ryan Cahill
We go BTS with London-based brand Underage to take a look at their AW19.
Launching back in 2017, London-based brand Underage are infatuated with romantic wild fantasies. They take their inspiration from contemporary pop culture and childhood nostalgia. The brand was founded by Beijing born designer Ying Shen, who started her career in textile printing and graphic design, which she studied at Central saint Martins. After previously showing at Seoul and Paris Fashion Weeks, she will be returning to London for her most recent season.
We spoke to Shen about what to expect from her exciting AW19 offering.
Tell us about your key inspirations for the new collection.
The “Horror Theme” is not easy to express in fashion terms, it can easily fall into too much “horror” and “darkness” to be sexy and appealing. A huge amount of inspiration for this season however did come from the Rocky Horror Show. The collection shows an element of horror in it of course but it also exudes sexuality. The androgyny and “gender blending“ in the film is something else we love and find inspiring. These concepts kind of became our staple to draw inspiration from pop culture, and the Rocky Horror Show was an icon of its time, so it just seemed to really fit.
How does this collection differ from your previous collections?
We started with our usual inspiration source of pop culture icons, and there you have our staple standout graphics. But this season we decided to try and go a bit of a different way with the garments, focusing more on a deconstructed use of sophisticated designs and tailoring.
What do you hope that people take away from this collection?
Despite the name, I don’t think people will leave feeling scared, at all. The Horror element in our show is more of a tongue-in-cheek kind of factor, such as in the Rocky Horror Show, rather than full-on gore fest. I am really hoping the audience will take away some inspiration from the show on how to push the boundaries of fashion, and also feeling entertained of course.
