London Fashion Week: Sinead Gorey AW24

Riffing on schoolgirl archetypes, Gorey pinpoints the unique sensibilities and styles that characterised her own adolescence, elevating that messy – if not chaotic – period spent between the classroom, bus stop and local corner shop.

Continuing her exploration of English youth culture, the designer trains her lens to the looks of 2000-and-late when she too came of age. As such, this season’s collaboration with the era’s defining label, Ed Hardy, offers a fitting throwback to the diamanté-encrusted and tattooed getups Gorey and her girl gang rocked on their precious weekends. Meanwhile, Steve Madden’s statement designs provide a pepped-up take on PE footwear.

However, it’s the very strictures of uniform that give Gorey’s protagonist her edge. “Back in the day, different schools had different tartan checks,” remembers Gorey. “That’s how you knew who went to what school.” So, rather than following regulation dress code or leaning into school rivalries, this cocksure student splices every shade of tartan into patchworked taffeta bodices, adorning them with down-filled skirts akin to hair scrunchies and dog-eared hems. A teacher’s pet, she is not.

Elsewhere, Gorey’s truant alumni kick out against school policy with DIY innovation. Like true St. Trinian’s, the girls treat their ties as a makeshift styling device, morphing them into argyle-print wraparounds or ribboning dresses. Prep-school blazer cottons are vandalised with punk badges – an early taste of self-discovery – or knife-pleated into detention-worthy micro-skirts. Teamed with woollen twinsets, clashing pop socks and evening gloves, a penchant for customisation comes to the fore. The iconic tit-slit top from Mean Girls is here reworked with contrast double layers and a Nu Rave palette for a right ‘ol Bri’ish take.

Of course, the ink-doodled hands of Gorey’s enfant terrible are resolutely punk, taking the tools of her time – silicone spikes or seamless knits – to embellish, pattern or perforate her garb. Think laddered tights, bras stuffed with fag packets and a restless desire to be anywhere but here, holed up in double-Geography. Quite right, too. She’s an Effy Stonem-coded teen, deep in the throes of growing up. Clumsy makeup attempts and bathroom gossiping find their match in underwear-as-outerwear digi prints, harking back to every girl’s rite of passage trialling lingerie.

Indeed, it’s quite the ride being this iPod-toting, Blackberry-pinging It-girl. Memories of rollerblading on the front drive or playing Snake on a Nokia brick have been subbed out for pie-eyed evenings at her first rave, and her bedroom is now plastered with the Prodigy’s Keith Flint, not the Spice Girls of SS24. As her hooded, Union Jack print prom dress – designed using bamboo-derived cotton – reminds us, she’s graduating into adulthood. Draped furs become opulent gowns or line evening coats, PVC bodycons are pleated along the flanks, and cropped plaid two-pieces join the wardrobe. This girl is in a rush: a rush to grow up.

Words by Joseph Bobowicz

CREDITS

CREATIVE DIRECTION – Sinead Gorey

STYLING – Sinead Gorey & Rhiannon Lagden

CASTING – Marie Claire

PRODUCTION – Faye Scott Maberley and Krystal Rodriguez

SET DESIGN – Alice Andrews

MOVEMENT DIRECTOR – Ed Munro

VIDEO DIRECTOR – Robbie Howat

HAIR – Carlo Avena

MAKEUP – Aoife Cullen

NAILS – Ella Vivii

MUSIC – Scarlet Gorey

SOUNDSCAPE ARTIST – David Jones

SPECIAL THANKS TO -  Steve Madden, Ed Hardy, Esspresoh, Falke, Unite, Harley James, Sarah Winton, Thomas Fee, Poppy Whitehorn, EJC Team, Betsy Cook, Charley Read, Victoria Agostini, Millie Dee Pima, Marilena Angelides, Jessica Sandford, Jasmine Dunne, Ellie Smith, Neve Randall, Amber Stephens, Amelie Frances Cooper, Esme Toker.