The happy dreamer is far from Milan

The happy dreamer is confused between dream and reality

The build up of excitement and expectation for the opening weekend of Milan has been pretty darn intense for me and the shows themselves thus far have only delivered a whimper. Of course not being in Milan itself is one of the reasons for my current state of indifference but even people experiencing the shows first hand are a little underwhelmed. Charlie Porter has decided to focus his Milan twitter coverage on things more exciting that the shows themselves...so far he has featured a blue van and a display of air conditioning pipes. There is however, something closer to home which is much more interesting than the goings on in Milan and that is LCF Graduate and ASOS LTD100 award winner, Kyung Hwa-Kim.

I only got to see three garments on show at the ASOS awards last week but was impressed and intrigued by the rounded shouldered tailoring. I emailed Hwa to congratulate her on winning the award because she was more than a little shocked and embarrassed by winning and asked to see her look book images and thankfully she agreed and here they are...

Kyung Hwa-Kim's graduate collection is inspired by the happy dreamer. Purity, innocence and masculinity overlap to create some confusion between reality and dream. Hwa was influenced by the Style Salvage film favourite, 'The Science of Sleep'. It is easy to see elements of Gondry's imagination throughout this collection. Unfortunately there are no giant hands on offer here but there is an exaggeration of silhouette achieved by curved shoulders which creates a wonderfully unusual effect just like those gigantic hands.

I love the dreamlike appearance and feel of the collection and the look book images themselves with accompanying illustrations which combine to create that sense of rubbing the sleep from your eyes in a state of confused consciousness questioning if what you just saw was real or dreamed.

I took a great deal of time examining the pieces on show last week as there was real beauty in the details and thankfully the below images demonstrate the celebration of intriguing detail and cut.

Each piece fits together and is interchangeable with the rest of the collection. There is a real sense of Hwa's continuity of theme which is most uncommon in graduate collections.

For a person who rarely remembers his dreams, I long to live or dream in a vision such as this. Mornings would be so much more fun if I could recall tales of sartorial characters with oversized tailored hunchbacks, 3D tops and pleated short trousers over a cup of tea, secretly longing to drift back in to my dream world.

Having seen her look book I was of course interested to find out what the future held in store for the young designer. Hwa would like to extend her study onto an MA but would like to explore real fashion world first. She is very interested in being a designer of course but also wants to explore pattern cutting, illustration anything related to Menswear and fashion along the way. For me, the runways of Milan might be struggling to create much excitement but there is so much more out there to discover and I can't wait to see more from designers like Kyung Hwa-Kim.