The Style Examiner: Reinventing the Blazer: Brioni and Royal College of Art Tailoring Project

Friday, 1 June 2012

Reinventing the Blazer: Brioni and Royal College of Art Tailoring Project

The entries for this year’s Tailoring Project competition organized between Italian menswear Brioni and London’s Royal College of Art (RCA) were unveiled on 31 May 2012 at a runway show where the college’s menswear and womenwear graduates also showed their final collections.

Felix Chabluk Smith - Brioni Award

At the start of the 2011/12 academic year, the first year of the postgraduate Menswear Fashion Programme at the RCA worked with Brioni to set the theme for this year’s Tailoring Project. After having reworked the smoking jacket, the travel jacket, the shirt jacket and the coat, this year Brioni selected the blazer.

Originally called the Navy Blazer, after the captain of the HMS Blazer frigate who designed the jacket for a visit to Queen Victoria, the blazer has become a symbol of universal elegance and a staple of any traditional male wardrobe.

Hanchul Lee - Creativity Award

Franciska Hjermov - Tailoring Award

All entries produced by the first year students revealed not only extremely competent command of tailoring and originality, but also a very proficient and confident capacity to deal with a commercial proposal from a creative point of view. The partnership assigned three awards: the Brioni Award (which went to Felix Chabluk Smith), the Creativity Award (awarded to Hanchul Lee) and the Tailoring Award (that went to Francisca Hjermov).

The Style Examiner had the opportunity to observe the outstanding entries from the front row and, in addition to the winners, would also highlight the entry by Liam Hodges (who paid homage to Thom Browne’s latest menswear collection and its playfully inflated shoulder lines), and the highly accomplished and elegantly structured proposals by Ivan Curia Nunes and Magnus Loppe.