The Gentle Frame

Press Release | Hannah Smith | Central Saint Martins BA Fashion 2025 | Womenswear Graduate Collection

Structure diffused. Vulnerability woven in.

There is tenderness in the things that hold us tight — fences, corsets, crutches – even when the rest of the world does not. In her debut collection, Hannah Smith explores medical aids as extensions of the body and blueprints of possibility. “There’s so much conceptual potential in designing for bodies with different needs,” she reflects. Across six looks, she uses these supports, not to bind, but to contour the body— listening to its posture, its stillness, and weight.

The collection takes its first breath at the threshold of an unyielding, wrought iron gate. Cast in streetlight against the pavement, its rigidity is momentarily undone - diffused into something lax and settling onto the concrete like sleet. This coexistence — hard and soft— forms Smith’s visual and material language. She takes the harsh contours of the city and fossilises them in cloth: airbrushed gates on coffee-stained muslin, raw threads trapped between sheers like ivy caught in fencing, and tendrils of loose latticework slipping down the body like vines or veins.

The materials move between resistance and release: sculpted corsetry in waste crepe, machine-embroidered stripes floating on tulle like spider limbs in web, lashings of layered organza billowing over metal structures. A palette of wind-worn black, misted ivory, and bruised rose anchors the collection, offset by glints of oxidised silver and pearlescent finishes. The silhouettes nod to the romance of 1840’s dress through high collars, capelets, and boning, but are adapted — draped in repose, shaped for movement, and moulded to rest. Sleeves are slashed, hems redrawn. Peplum jackets curl outward, trimmed in serrated tulle. Skirts part, rise, or pool to accommodate seated bodies. Each garment is attuned to the person that it holds.

It is her brother’s experience with neurofibromatosis type 2 — lived, felt, witnessed — that gives this collection its spine. His journey shapes Smith’s understanding of how bodies can be rendered hyper-visible by aid, yet simultaneously erased by inaccessibility. Smith proposes a new fashion language: one forged in the beautiful, imperfect interplay of flesh and metal.

Words by Karma Casto