CSM BA Fashion Communication with Promotion graduates Imogen Eveson and Samara Tompsett are curating a fashion-based area at leading arts festival, Latitude.

The Painted House will take place in the festival’s Faraway Forest from the 12th – 15th July. As a set designer, Samara will create the scene: a fantastical tableau, departed from reality and inspired by the idea of Marie Antoinette’s crumbling boudoir; but with a contemporary slant. Meanwhile, Imogen has curated a programme of fashion workshops, talks and live shoots to animate the set, inviting a host of inspirational creatives to respond to the theme of fashion tribes.

Events include a fashion fanzine workshop with CSM BA Illustration alumna, Nina Chakrabarti, and Samantha Davis, global style-blogger and editor of Wandering Threads presenting fashions and trends from around the world. In addition there will be workshops from Vintage fashion specialists Rag&Bow, an exhibition of Latitude-inspired work by fashion illustrator Rosie McGuinness and a live body painting session and photo shoot.

This is the third time Samara and Imogen have pitched their house at Latitude – a festival the Guardian calls “the frontrunner when it comes to combining music, art, dance and poetry”. In 2010, they took their degree show straight out of Charing Cross Road and installed it in a garden shed in the forest. The next year, Samara and Imogen returned with The Paper House – an abandoned journalist’s office that hosted an oversized newspaper, The Chronicles of Latitude, that played on the forest’s Narnia theme. But this year they returned to explore fashion – realising just how engaging, interesting and beautiful it can be in a festival context. “Fashion is still quite unchartered territory at Latitude – and indeed, most festivals,” says Imogen, “even though, conversely, festivals have become synonymous with fashion, and not always in a good way! So it’s exciting to feel like we’re actually pioneering something, and presenting fashion to people in a way that has integrity and really engages people.”

Imogen and Samara are currently fundraising for The Painted House. Visit their wefund page to make a donation.

Find out more:
- Imogen Eveson’s website
- Samara Tompsett’s website
- Latitude festival website
- BA FCP course page