Designer Hayley Cherkas presents her latest collection, after graduating last year from CSM last year, Cherkas’s subsequent collection Out of Office explores the pressures young designers feel after graduation, to throw themselves into the ever-spinning wheels of the fashion industry. By means of combatting this unease, Out of Office champions the power of serenity, freedom, and adopting a slower routine.

In order to create this atmosphere, Cherkas advocates a timely approach to the craftsmanship of the collection; a way to appreciate the development of each of the garments that utilise elements of tailoring and formalwear, presented in a way that looks somehow soft and comforting.

This collection draws on visually on the contemplative nature and forms of still-lifes by Josef Sudek and domestic paintings where soft light played a key role. This is discernible in the use of semi-sheer fabrics, bolder, striped tops, juxtaposing warmer, brighter colours alongside darker, and more heavily constructed trousers and skirts.

Naturally developed silhouettes were created by draping on the stand to create garments that had a sense of body and movement within them, again pushing forward the sense of freedom and serenity through dressing.

See below the lookbook for Out of Office, and click here to see previous work from Hayley, as previously featured on PYLOT.