Edward Cuming is the kind of “if you know, you know” designer that fashion folk love to talk about as their newest, shiniest discovery. And in a way he is; Cuming’s clothes have only recently entered the fashion zeitgeist—Vogue Runway’s street style galleries included—even though the Australian designer has been at it since 2019.
His under-the-radar status until now has had to do with the fact that he’s based in Madrid and has kept his clothes off the runway. Though he holds an MA in menswear from Central Saint Martins, he took the slow lane to build his brand while freelancing and teaching fashion on the side, and that measured pace has helped make his clothes, as kooky and exuberant and playful as they are, also feel resolved.
“You’re never wondering what the thing is,” the designer said to this effect. He was speaking of his more unconventional machinations: a striped sweater with its hem detached and draping down its sides, an overcoat with raglan kimono sleeves and a ballooning body that cinches at the upper thigh to create a Poiret-like cocoon shape. Cuming’s clothes do have a nostalgic familiarity; one of his signatures is to make the most recognizable of things feel foreign and welcoming at the same time.
There’s also a friskiness to Cuming’s work—that’s the contemporary side of his aesthetic. It’s most obvious in a range of over-frayed silky separates: a dress, a skirt, a button-down. The technique consists of applying panels of tonal frayed fabric onto a plain body for a sort of trompe l’oeil slashing effect. “I think she’s reached the end of the road,” he said of the motif, “how many more could I add?” But in the words of Mean Girls’ Lindsay Lohan, the limit doesn’t exist—or it shouldn’t, at least. Cuming’s fabric collaging is entirely too fun for him to put it away now.
He said that his goal this season was to elevate some of his design signatures—the fraying, his circular appliqués, those inside-out seams—and apply them to “more evening” looks. This is where Cuming’s eye for fabrics should not be overlooked. The obvious standout is a teal jacquard with scattered coral flowers used on a terrific coat and matching skirt and capri pants. But notice the charming dotted jacquard of a men’s suit (cut double-breasted with a high break, a wide lapel, and slightly too-long sleeves with droopy trousers—pretty great). He sewed a tapestry-like floral into a pair of inside-out jeans and left the seams to fray, and employed “very disco” (his words) silver sequins for yet another pair of capris—the silhouette is Cuming’s big bet this season, and it’s a pretty convincing one.
Cuming has a way of injecting modernity and punkiness into fabrics and silhouettes that could otherwise read antiquated—it’s a neat skill to possess as shoppers of his generation chase everything vintage and vintage-looking. His taste for eccentricity was balanced by a dose of pragmatism here that rendered a fun yet wearable collection. Perhaps uncoincidentally, he named it “Grow Up.”