Part of the graduation collection Dalston Diamonds+City Cinderellas* for the RCA Show, 2013.
Inspired by the colours and textures of London, this is a collection about the girls of the city – fragile beings of inner strength, balancing on stilts on their way through the man-made world that surrounds them. They are the organic disruptions among the concrete walls and glass towers. Under their feet glass cracks and shatters to turn into diamonds and the concrete thins out to form delicate soles held togehter by leather. Materials of raw beauty like cracked glass, concrete and metal, are combined with leather to juxtapose traditional shoe structure and making with experimental work on colour and material combinations. The focus is on shape, texture and colour alike to express a vision equally serene and sharp. The world is both hard and cracking, solid and brittle, powerful, yet vulnerable and so are these city cinderellas
*Dalston diamonds: this is what they used to call the smashed glass from broken car windows in the streets of Hackney, London when it was still rough.
Material: leather + glass + concrete
© Iva Minkova, photograph by Rob Fawcett
