A rocking year for designer Christopher Raeburn

We interviewed cutting edge British fashion designer Christopher Raeburn way back in March, but since then he’s been a very busy bee indeed. To top off his spectacular year, Raeburn has recently been announced as one of the recipients of the British Fashion Council’s prestigious NEWGEN award. Louise Black writes.

After collaborating with established British designer Tim Soar on a menswear range that showed at Paris Men’s Fashion Week AW09 and his solo womenswear collection was showcased at London Fashion Week AW09, Raeburn went on to win The Hospital Club’s Emerging Fashion Designer category, in association with The Independent.

The BFC’s NEWGEN (or New Generation) awards, in collaboration with Topshop, has been supporting and promoting emerging British design talent since 1993. Previous winners have included Alexander McQueen, Matthew Williamson, Christopher Kane and Richard Nicholl, to name a few. As a winner Raeburn will receive exhibition funding through which he will be given space at Somerset House, the home of London Fashion Week, where he can display his collection and the intriguing process behind it.

Raeburn’s beautiful high-end street wear collections are constructed from re-appropriated military fabrics sourced from all over Europe.

Fascinated by the regeneration of materials designed purely for function into something seriously desirable, Raeburn uses de-commissioned military stock such as parachutes and waterproofs to produce almost unrecognisably delicate outerwear and daywear. Of course an equally desirable consequence of this process is that these recycled fabrics are much more ethically responsible than what you might find in your average designer street wear.

Raeburn’s pieces also proudly carry the label ‘Remade In England’ as they are all produced in East London. For those not on the guest list for LFW in February, Raeburn’s AW10 menswear collection is available at Liberty of London, while Browns Focus, Isetan in Tokyo, Takashimaya in New York and Rome’s La Fate Ignoranti have put in orders for his womenswear, which will be hitting the shelves in January 2010.

Christopher Raeburn