YOUNGSTERS from Bryn–mawr are the stars of a new fashion project book and film sponsored by the House of Alexander McQueen.

Twelve to 17-year-olds from the town’s Coed Cae Interact Club are among those involved in the creative educational project inspired by South Wales’s local crafts and landscape, seen through McQueen’s fashion lens.

The whole project led by McQueen creative designer Sarah Burton, which includes Rotary Brynmawr, culminated in a four-day location shoot around Brynmawr, Keeper’s Pond near Blaenavon, Abertillery Park, Blaina and Ogmore-by-Sea.

“The belief in offering creative opportunities to young people is at the heart of what we pioneer at Alexander McQueen,” says Burton, who previously delved into Welsh folklore for her autumn 2020 collection, when she was introduced to the work of Welsh creative and filmmaker Charlotte James and Welsh-based French photographer Clémentine Schneidermann, who had spent six years working with local youth groups under the Ffasiwn Stiwdio banner.

Fashion bible Vogue reported the McQueen team gave “immersive workshops in fashion, photography, and embroidery in which the young people could explore their own vision and gain hands-on experience of making clothes and images”.

Later, one-to-one tutorials taught various techniques to create sketches, Polaroids, family research, handicraft and fittings embroidered with personal messages and motifs.

Now the project and finished works have been gathered in a book, Alexander McQueen in Wales, a short documentary and a fashion film launched on Monday on YouTube.

Vogue said, highlighting pictures taken at Keeper’s Pond: “The fashion film is a paean to the magic of Celtic folklore — the allegorical Lady of the Lake and glistening Mermen—as much as it is to youthful small-town realities (hanging in the park with mates, the escape of youth club excursions).

“It focuses specifically on a series of Alexander McQueen lilac dresses billowing… and offset by arresting red accents, a signature for McQueen and Welsh folklore alike (farmhouses were historically painted red to ward off evil).

“Creative achievements aside (of which there are many glorious examples), the inspiring casting was key; the young people joined a digital workshop with Burton and McQueen’s casting director Jess Hallett who encouraged them to choose a friend or family member as muse.”

The beginnings of the project can be dated back to 2015, when Clémentine Schneidermann, who has just completed a practice-based PhD at the University of South Wales entitled Photographing Children in a Social Context: Narratives and Strategies, and Charlotte James began costume-making workshops at the Coed Cae Interact club and in Merthyr Tydfil, and launched a project called It’s Called Ffasiwn.

The project “characterised by hybridity, flexibility, and playfulness” searched for “all the oddities in Wales” and “has left a conversation regarding Valleys communities and their creative futures in its wake”.

Clothing, material and make-up become tools the pair used to explore notions of gender and girlhood, with “costume, class, collaboration and agency intersecting with constructions of gender”.

Vogue said of the McQueen initiative: “The project is a further extension of Burton and Alexander McQueen’s ongoing commitment to fashion education, which started in 2019 with study programs and open-access installations, and a scheme to donate and redistribute left-over materials for student collections.

“Burton views the creative spoils of these young people as a testament to the transformative things “that can happen everywhere, when empowering equal access is given to creative ideas.”

Burton said of working with the youngsters: “There was an openness and enthusiasm about them that I found incredibly inspiring...

“I wanted children to experience the enjoyment that comes from creativity and understand that they can use it as a means of expression.

“It was their enthusiasm which was so incredible to see. It was also wonderful to see their loving nature, and how close they were to their families and friends.”

The ‘Alexander McQueen in Wales Fashion Film’ is now on YouTube.