Mark Fast (Q3310)
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Mark Fast is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Mark Fast |
Mark Fast is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
It’s no secret that Mark Fast is a raver. Where in the past he’d party hard in his native Canada, these days he’s constantly on the search for music in the sanctuary of his London studio. “I love that adrenaline rush of feeling a new song and feeling the bass,” he said at a preview. “For this show, I wanted to create a space that gives me nostalgic feelings of when I used to dance in front of the speakers in underground clubs.”The result of this instinctive sensory experience? Reworked takes on his signature silhouettes, made for the modern club-goer. “It’s still very much in the heart of the customer that they wear [the pieces] out,” he said. Fast’s fan base will be hitting dance floors in his recognizable knitwear, which arrived as body-flossing dresses and separates in neon green and pink, as well as red, yellow, orange, and blue. There were options for his celebrity loyals, too: the finale looks, two crocheted dresses with super-fine strips of tulle fringing on the skirts, could be alt red-carpet ensembles, and the mini purple-grey fringed version was fit for a festival stage.“What else would they wear in their worlds? And what would I wear, actually?” he said. “I love my drama, and I have it. But also, who is this woman? This woman likes to go out, she also likes to be warm.” And so he introduced layers for his revelers this season: windproof outerwear, denim jackets, shell tracksuits, and sweatshirts.For those on the benches who have watched Fast’s shows over the past decade or so, his intended feeling of nostalgia was stirred in the colorful, strip-lit room of East London’s Bike Shed—a venue he chose for its likeness to those clubs he went to. He’ll be dancing in his spring collection come 2025.
13 September 2024
Mark Fast came across the inspiration for his fall collection on a graffiti-covered street in Milan named after Italian designer Joe Colombo. “I was like, Why am I stopping here?” he said. “It was this organic, of-the-moment thing.”Fast didn’t directly reference Colombo’s work in the clothes he created this season; instead he used it as a springboard to tap into his own interpretation of modern elegance. “I had this vision of rock stars who fall from another planet, they come to earth,” the designer said. “What would they dress up as?”This intergalactic concept was expressed in various eclectic ways: velvet chenille dresses interwoven with his signature fishnet crochet—some with faux-fur hemlines or necklines or viscose fringing—in black, neon, and burgundy shades. There was also more daywear than in previous seasons across both womenswear and menswear. Denim jeans were poppered onto denim boots; hoodies and tees came emblazoned with Fast’s graffiti tag that he made for what he called his “younger audience”; cropped puffers were fitted close to the body like corsets.Alongside his own imaginative touch points and Colombo’s work, Fast designed fall with his “muse of the moment” in mind: Lily-Rose Depp, whom he dressed forVogueAustralia last year. “She’s cool. I love that energy, that vibe—film star, artistic, strong.”According to the designer, “the Mark Fast man and woman love to take risks and experiment with fashion and their bodies.” That said, this season he wanted to cover what he’d usually expose (though there was still skin flashing), offering some looks that were more modest than usual for his fan base—and himself. “There are a few pieces that I might steal from the collection,” said Fast. “It’s nice—I can actually wear my things. I get into it and feel the vibe of the customer.”
16 February 2024
Mark Fast wants to expand his customers’ wardrobe beyond the spliced knitted dresses he made his signature more than a decade ago. His spring 2024 collection opened with knitted fishnet leggings and a matching top that harked back to his trademark cutout body-cons—new iterations of those dresses also came later in the show—but there was plenty of newness for his loyal fan base. “I want to give the customers of my brand more options,” he said in a preview. “Knitting is how I started and it’s how I narrate my idea of fashion, so it’s always got to be there, but we’re slowly developing it and experimenting.”Lightweight denim was the focus this season, realized as miniskirts and mini-shorts, cropped jackets, jeans, frayed waistcoats, and jorts across the womenswear and menswear offerings.More on the menswear: Mark Fast’s fall wardrobe (as seen on the runway last season) contains puffers and sporty track tops. Spring, according to the designer, is about shell trousers, graphic tees, and silk-satin separates. There was even a tailored moment in the first section: a lapel-less, double-breasted jacket and cargo shorts in gray. Again, plenty of newness for the designer’s die-hards.A fair amount of skin was on show via the aforementioned knitted minidresses, skirts, and rib-grazing tops—woven using a range of techniques involving linen and elastic yarns, one of which featured fringing that looked like unraveled tape reel—but other looks were more modest. A handful dabbled with layering: Look 34 boasted a plaid shirt worn beneath a tie-dyed logo tee, followed by a look that was made up of a long-sleeve top beneath a denim bustier.Fast’s thumping soundtrack put the inspiration for the collection into context. “I got quite inspired by the desert, the dawn and the dusk of the desert, what it feels like to be in the sunrise and the sundown, that feeling that you get when everyone’s asleep but you’re awake.” A desert festival, perhaps? “Not Burning Man,” the designer insisted (he said he was inspired by the 2016 filmThe Bad Batch). But the acid-splashed denim, copious fringing, silk-satin scarf tops, and stomper boots certainly wouldn’t look out of place in Nevada.
15 September 2023
Mark Fast was feeling particularly nostalgic for fall, remembering the days when he was in the MA Fashion studios of Central Saint Martins with the late professor Louise Wilson. “I wanted to look back to the skills that I used to create dresses in the past,” he said at a preview. “After all these years, it’s been great to get back to working on my knit machine, because that’s where it all started—I get so much inspiration from all things technical.”Fast, who describes himself as a knitwear designer, provided a variety of party-appropriate looks. In addition to eye-catching green and pink separates, there were sensuous, backless midi dresses and jumpsuits with frayed details in black, mustard, and cobalt blue. Black knits with spider web accents served as the show’s opening and closing looks, a style Fast first experimented with for his final collection on the CSM MA programme. “There’s something in the air with craft at the moment,” the designer mused. “It makes me want to hone in even more on craftsmanship, but still make fun pieces that are ready to be lived in.”Elsewhere, Fast ventured further into menswear (seen on both men and women). It felt strong in the mix but could be refined further—more knitwear and tailoring, less sportswear motifs. The confident stride of a male model in one of the knitted jumpsuits felt like a welcome step in the direction of androgynous design.
17 February 2023
For spring, Mark Fast continued embracing the upbeat, party-girl vibe he’s been pushing for the past couple of seasons. “I wanted to keep that energy going but with an athletic edge,” he said in a preview ahead of the show. “It’s about celebrating life with bright colors, as well as getting back into health and fitness.”Taking inspiration from the zesty aesthetic of ’80s fitness videos, as well as the moody underground club culture of the ’90s, the designer sent a multitude of party-appropriate looks down the runway. From colorful graffiti-print denim separates to knit halter-neck bodysuits equipped with hoods, there was plenty that would make giddy for a night out. Other notable moments included hybrid sneaker heels that were in keeping with the overarching theme, as well as precision-cut oversized satin blazers in purple and neon yellow.The neon knit cutout minidresses might’ve been made too short: Models struggled to keep the dresses from rising above their crotches. The menswear had some eye-catching moments but, at some points, felt out of place within the collection, especially when there were elements that looked too skater inspired. Overall, Fast delivered on what he does best, which is going-out dresses for the bold.
16 September 2022
This season, Mark Fast continued where he left off: embracing a spirit of club-ready hedonism as a theatrical celebration of his former life as a raver and goth. “I think I just feel ready to start life again,” he said. “A lot of the things that I felt very nostalgic about during the lockdown, like nightclubs, it’s time to get those back going.” For the more sartorially adventurous night owl, Fast had plenty of clothes in which to do so. He continued his recent forays into logo-heavy sportswear, which were both exuberant and eye-popping. They fitted in well at his venue—a basement in Soho lit up with neon tube lights and soundtracked by a series of club bangers. Fast also evolved his menswear offering this season, venturing into tailoring (albeit styled with denim or jersey bottoms) and some more sophisticated outerwear pieces.Fast’s formula works best when he plays to his strengths: the clingy knit dresses that first made his name were recreated here in the form of the stretchy ribbed panels he’s been exploring over the past few seasons, as well as being made, cheeringly, for a broader range of figures. Particularly compelling were a few more sophisticated takes on this template, including those with a longer length, or a two-piece neatly accessorized with a matching faux fur stole. Elsewhere, a fun knit dress came in kaleidoscopic, elasticated ribbing with a dramatic swish of coordinating fringe, while another took his crisscrossed bands all the way down to the floor in a pretty shade of crimson. It may occasionally feel like a tale of two halves between clubby dresses and sportswear, but you can’t fault Fast for his enthusiasm—his attitude was proudly party-ready.
18 February 2022
A journey through the hedonism of ’90s British subcultures was what Mark Fast proposed this season, with a high-octane collection that dialed up the sex factor. At the core of the collection—outside of the streetwear bells and whistles Fast has expanded into more recently—was a return to the clingy knit dresses that first made his name back when he was a rising star on the London fashion scene over a decade ago. Here, they came in stretchy panels attached together by silver chain links or looped around to form circular cutouts and embellished with rings. Staged in an industrial car park near Leicester Square, these were party-ready pieces for the most daring of dressers.The countercultural references didn’t always land. The heavily logo’d bags, for example, felt a little out of place within the lineup of acid house shell suits and graffiti-inspired, hand-painted denim pieces. Still, it was clear that Fast was having a whole lot of fun this season revisiting the style codes of his youth and updating them for the youth of today.
18 September 2021
In November, Mark Fast opened his first standalone store in Beijing, the first of many he’s planning to launch over the next 12 months as he expands his retail footprint in East Asia with the help of a new business partner in the region. At a time of rapid growth for the Canadian-born designer’s 12-year-old brand, there’s only one downside: He hasn’t yet been able to visit the store due to the ongoing travel restrictions. “It seems very surreal to see it all growing when I’m not there, and I really miss going to China, but it’s all very exciting,” Fast says.For his latest collection back in his adopted hometown of London, Fast was looking to a different kind of journey, however: one that took him 20 thousand leagues under the sea. While Fast’s calling card was once his inventive use of knitwear to craft clingy, party-ready minidresses, he’s been carefully expanding his range to include more playful, sporty pieces and a growing menswear line too. But it’s his “demi-couture” pieces that dazzle most, here coming in the form of extravagant dresses featuring slinky knitted bustiers that erupt into feathers and sequins in a spectrum of greens and blues that carry a distinctly underwater shimmer.“When I found myself stripping everything back in my life, I found myself really craving nature and the basics of the earth,” Fast explained of his primary source of inspiration. “I started to obsess over researching underwater creatures and the deep blue sea, just discovering all these mysteries that I never knew and different animals I had never heard of.” Even if travel is looking increasingly likely later this year and Fast may find himself able to toast the launch of his new stores sooner rather than later, for now he’s happy to be inspired by the unlikely rabbit holes he’s headed down during quarantine. In his own words: “It’s all about finding beauty in the unknown.”
22 February 2021
Backstage after Mark Fast's show, a girl packing up a few of the looks seemed to know a lot about the new spongy knit and how it combined chenille and merino. She also mentioned that it was fun to work with, but joked that her arm nearly fell off in the process. It's easy to forget that Fast's signature cobwebby dresses require high-level intarsia, plaiting, and felting techniques and, increasingly, yarn innovation. The cling is the thing. Today, though, the most salient takeaway was how noticeably Fast challenged himself with new silhouettes, all the way down to the metallic creepers the models wore. The opening look consisted of a vibrant blue flouncy sweater in the aforementioned spongy material. While its shape came courtesy of an interior drawstring, Fast cleverly emphasized the dimensionality with black lines within the knit. He also tested the slouchy waters with robe layers, roll-neck jumpers, and—gasp!—a pair of paper-bag-waist sweatpants. That being said, a taut bottom remains a prerequisite for his maxi tube skirts.A recent trip to Mumbai with its omnipresent neon lights and saturated sunsets gave Fast his ombré color scheme. (For those who are committed to his signature body-con dresses, you might as well add one in shaded tangerine.) The soft-spoken designer mentioned that he has considered introducing new volume for some time. Now that he has—witness the final look, a remarkably un-Fastian belted coat with kimono sleeves—there's no going back.
13 February 2014
Mark Fast told us in his show notes that his Spring collection is all about the party girl. Back in the day, regular broadcasting in rural Canada, where Fast is from, would shut off at midnight, leaving his muse, home after a late night, to stare at the static of TV screens.Given the body-con dresses and the teased Joan Jett hair on the runway this evening, it would be easy to say, oh, "There's that Mark Fast cobwebby knitted thing again," but on closer inspection, his work is much more important. This is because Fast is a fabric innovator, a fact he demonstrated this season with his woven wool dresses. "I guess I am quite technical," he said backstage. "I work a lot with Woolmark and especially now with this great new fabric called cooling wool, which does what it says—cools down, rather than heats up. It's perfect for those who don't like scratchy wool. It is a genuine innovation."Fast also used a "racking" technique, which created the zigzag in his dresses that mimicked the static of his television. (Though it was tempting to see references to Missoni's zigzags, that was not it at all.) Fluoro yellow fringing—very Stevie Nicks—added to the interest. Blue and black also looked great together.The problem with Fast is that he's better than he thinks. He needs to move beyond what has become his shtick and translate all that innovation into something besides a body-hugging dress. We are all waiting.
13 September 2013
Mark Fast by name, fast by nature is the way we've come to think about this knitwear designer. And yet there was something else on display today at his short presentation. Yes, the clothing was still sexy—there was a barely there knitted bodysuit under one magenta cape of distressed threads that looked like beautiful, disheveled feathers—but there was also a feeling of drama, introspection, and, dare we say, melancholy attached to his ten looks.The Mark Fast woman seems to be in something of a funk, or rather it is the designer himself—the collection is called Through the Darkness, after all. Apparently, the designer decided to use this ill mood and create some beautiful garments in the process. A tight, black, shaggy mohair maxi dress opened the proceedings but was given something of a monastic feel with the addition of a black knitted headpiece—this was a motif that was repeated throughout. In short, it is hard to be seen as a simple sexpot in a knitted coif—even with the addition of some remarkable stocking shoes by the footwear designer Eelko Moorer.In fact, the coif appeared to be a nod to the costume designer and art director Eiko Ishioka, who died last year and was one of the inspirations for the show. Among her credits were the Oscar-winning costumes forBram Stoker's Draculaand the production design ofMishima,as well as the extraordinary costumes in that profoundly odd Jennifer Lopez vehicleThe Cell.As Fast said at the end of his show, "I had drama going on in my life, and this was reflected in the drama in the clothes. These were dark times, but I wanted to find the beauty in that and show emotion through texture. It was a different way of working for me." And it succeeded.
16 February 2013
Mark Fast collections do have a tendency to bring out a person's puritanical scold. That skirt istoo short. Those clothes aresee-through. That is abathing suit, not adress! At this point, you can only assume that Fast banks on this effect; today's show, not atypically, seemed designed to provoke. Not the hip-hop references in the styling, which in another setting would have looked fresh; it was the way, all his own, that Fast played peekaboo with the clothes themselves that felt contrived to shock. It's not inconceivable that he could have emphasized the more conservative pieces in a way that would have made a realistic case for the Mark Fast point of view. If you looked closely, you encountered not a few garments here that worked, like the mix-and-matchable skintight skirts and a fringed, mint-colored tank dress. Meanwhile, the knit bras sit easily within the emerging trend for bandeaux and crop tops, and his little pastel cardigans actually read a little twee. Anyway, Fast—as usual—tried to make his collection look as outré as possible. Why? Who knows. But he ought to up the ante: It's getting hard to shock that inner scold.
16 September 2012
Mark Fast's show today represented a welcome return to form for the designer. Put simply, the clothes here were realistic: Though Fast didn't stint on the skintight, barely there dresses for which he's best known, and though he did allow himself a few oddball embellishments, he also sent out a plethora of pieces that had universal appeal. Chief among these were the many knit garments in Fast's variegated stripes. The crop tops and fitted skirts had a sporty mien that lent a new dimension to his signature sexiness; meanwhile, the stripes added a graphic edge to the cozy, oversize wool cardigans and jackets. Elsewhere, the designer asserted some discipline over his feral fringes, saving the look for cool, hairlike shrugs and a few voluminous coats. Despite all the layers, this collection had a cleaner look than that of recent Fast seasons, and the clothes appeared better fitted and finished. The trademark hedonism remained intact, but it was expressed with a nice sense of refinement.
19 February 2012
Mark Fast continued to expand the horizons of his brand at his show today. London's knit-meister sent out a variety of innovative new crochets, and he also introduced more cut-and-sew pieces. Perhaps most notably, however, this season witnessed the designer experimenting with a tone—one that was more bohemian and romantic than we've seen from him up to now. The mood was most forcibly reflected in Fast's fringed pieces, such as the halterneck knit dress with a skirt of gold fringe so gossamer, it almost read like hair. But the feeling extended to his flared knit skirts, and his sweet crocheted looks, as well. A pretty crocheted dress with tiers of ruffles was likably gamine; the pale, barely there dress a cascading, asymmetric gown that looked fit for a modern-day Jean Harlow.Elsewhere, it was nice to see Fast trying his hand at non-knit looks. He introduced a print—a lava-esque abstract rendered in blood red and in orange tones—and applied it to tailored dresses and skirts. He faces stiff competition here; there are designers in London who have built their careers around print, and they've learned how to construct a garment to highlight pattern. Fast hasn't mastered that trick yet, though his most basic effort in this group, a matching miniskirt and crop top, looked decently sharp. Anyway, he's got some work to do in that department.Of more concern—and at this point, it's a recurring concern—is Fast's seeming disinterest in the fit and wearability of his clothes. The problem isn't universal within his collections, but there were enough red-flag moments here—the shoulder that kept slipping off the first dress; the model hobbling down the runway in her long, skintight, crocheted number; another model who had to carry the train of her gown in her hand—that you really have to wonder whether Fast ever thinks about the real-life women who might wear his clothes. If that's not something on his mind, it should be.
18 September 2011
It's probable that many of Mark Fast's peers have envied him in recent years: Right out of the gate, he established the kind of instantly identifiable aesthetic signature that most designers take years, if not entire careers, to build. If you saw a corset-tight engineered knit dress laced with cleverly placed holes, you knew right away it was Mark Fast. Perhaps inevitably, though, he's had trouble proving he's not a one-trick pony; the collection he showed tonight was obviously intended as a riposte to that complaint. There was lots of leather, a new material for Fast, and more intriguingly, he played fresh technical games with his knits, developing ways of building them three-dimensionally. The leathers, it must be said, were a misfire. There were some decent T-shirt dresses in black leather and beige suede, and a few interesting jackets, high-necked and closed to one side with straps. But none looked quite accomplished or luxurious enough.Fast's new knits are trickier to assess. The first few looks were promising—a wrap coat with massive shoulders that looked a bit like shrubbery; a high-waisted miniskirt, trademark-tight, in a dense wool rib, with a matching crop top featuring more of that shrubbery. Later in the show, Fast sent out a variety of typically skin-baring dresses with a cool accordion pleat built into the knit, and he used the same technique in a big, drapey cardigan. There was a great stretched wool that looked like Mongolian fur, too, used in a dramatic coat. It was nice to see Fast finding ways to accommodate his innovative knitting to covered-up looks, as well as racy ones.But there was a certain point in this show—maybe around the time Fast sent out a super-mini knit dress, barely there in form as well as color, with a block of that shrubbery knit ringing the hemline—where he started to lose the audience. People can argue until the cows come home about whether or not Fast's super-sexed-up aesthetic is vulgar, but there were a few too many looks here that were just plain hard to fathom.
20 February 2011
Mark Fast's challenge for his first stand-alone show at London fashion week was brutally clear: How could he build an entire collection from his particular area of knitwear expertise, which is so defined…no, make thatrestricted?His bizarre story line—a utopia destroyed by acid rain—couldn't offer much by way of inspiration, though perhaps Fast took its central notion of destruction and resurrection to heart when he combined his trademark open-stitch knits with sweeping swaths of fringe, thus giving something that is limited by its body-consciousness a whole new movement and openness. The designer's used fringing before, but it had a real allure when it swung in sunset shades off the hem of a fitted web of a dress in a peachy color. Still, it's never going to escape its showgirl associations. In fact, there were moments when Fast even seemed to be playing up that idea, so Vegas-ready were some of his outfits.As far as the knits themselves went, he was after a new precision—less webby, more geometric—though his lattice of keyholes bared more flesh than ever. Even when he covered up, it was with inserts of see-through plastic (oddly parked at crotch level in one number). A collaboration with Swarovski produced dresses that limned the body with crystals. The showgirl-o-meter remained curiously unmoved by those, perhaps because they were nothing compared to the put-your-eye-out patent bras that accessorized the collection.So did Mark pass the Fast challenge? The jury might be out for one more season.
19 September 2010
For a softly spoken Canadian knitter from the forest fringes of Winnipeg, Mark Fast has certainly made a lot of headway. Since last season's show, he's become a champion of size-inclusive modeling—a stroke that made him headlines the world over—and launched a second line of stretchy underwear and body dresses named Faster. So far, so impressive, but such is the voracious speed of information absorption that Fast was in the position of having to pull off something extra for Fall.Was it there? In part. He opened with a flowing, nut-brown silken poncho dress and a cranberry suede gored skirt and jacket that announced that he's aware more needs to be added to his short, tight, stretchy repertoire. Waterfall scarf trails and flippy skirts in viscose knits recurred here and there, but mostly he kept to his tried and tested device of matte, elastic open-stitch cobwebby knits, engineered to cling to everything you've got.There's no doubt Fast should be applauded for continuing to use plus-size models. Carrying that through for a second time not only showed integrity but made it look almost normal practice—or at least not as novel as it did at first. Still, now that he's set himself the admirable goal of making everyone feel great about her shape, Fast has a way to go to see it through. There were glitches in the underpinnings and kinks and creases in the fabrication that (literally) needed to be smoothed out in this collection for it to seem 100 percent gorgeously convincing for all.
19 February 2010
Larger-sized women championed by London's cult leader of skinny, cobwebby knitted dressing? Unlikely but true, and when it came to it, Mark Fast courageously followed through on his convictions. "A lot of people think it's not appropriate to use plus-size models," he said. "But I met these girls and I loved their charisma. They're just jewels, you know?" He needed to keep his nerve about it. According to Amanda May, Fast's managing director, his show stylist quit over the designer's insistence on including three models from a plus agency on the runway amongst regular girls.That incident is certain to detonate a media furor in which Fast may find himself accused of stirring up self-publicity—but anyone who encountered the soft-spoken 28-year-old Canadian backstage would pick up on the fact that he isn't like that. In any case, his status as an insider designer for hot women doesn't need any artificial push. Runway-side, what Fast's fans were actually focusing on was their next excuse to wriggle into something strategically holey to stretch across themselves. This season there was a move forward, vaguely inspired, Fast said, by watching twenties Egyptian silent-movie epics andErin Brockovich.That could account, sort of, for the feathery fringed skirt on a scoop-neck dress, the sucked-to-the-body dresses (including a good one in lemon and beige), and an incendiary girdle and bra in cinnamon.Still, Fast's attraction is more in his technique—and the way he thinks of his knitting as a close cousin of hosiery rather than sweater dressing. (Twinsets have never really been his thing.) In the long run, that small but notable fact about this ex-Saint Martins specialist could be crucial to a career path that might easily lead him into a lucrative future in leg coverings and underpinnings.
18 September 2009
Another knitwear talent is on the loose from the Central Saint Martin's M.A., this time via Canada. He's Mark Fast, one of the two designers who passed the rigors of the New Generation selection committee this season. "It's time for a rebellion against safeness. It's exciting to be a designer now," said Fast, who was charged up like many others in London by thinking about a powerful natural phenomenon as a symbol of the season: "Thunderstorms. That moment of fear and negativity, mixed with something that also feels beautiful." That was interesting as a zeitgeist-briefing, but what of the clothes? They were in the vein of body-con dressing that has been such a continuing theme in London. As well as subtle ladder stitches running over the contours of backs and hips, there were fringes made of combed viscose and boleros made of knitted velvet. If some of it had the cast of Azzedine Alaïa, who produced shapes not so far from this years ago, it was obvious this boy has something of his own, too, and will eventually make a product that can appeal to a broad constituency. At the moment, the length of the dresses really only makes them viable, outside of clubs, as T-shirts. As Fast's former professor, the straight-talking Louise Wilson, jokingly chided him backstage, "They're a bit short, aren't they? Couldn't you have knitted four more rows?"
23 February 2009