Alexander Wang, AW11, New York.

Felting is one of those crafty techniques that can risk being the unnecessary centre of attention on a garment. It is a process by which soapy water and friction are applied to wool to make the fibres lock together to create a new fabric.

You can felt the fibres alone to create felt or felt one fabric to another. As the process is quite labour intensive, you sometimes get the feeling in student work that the felting needs to be the focal point of the collection, because it has been such hard work.

Alexander Wang recently found a more subtle use of felting in his AW11 collection where the knitwear appears to morph into the jackets and silk dresses underneath. The understated colour palette definitely helps here as well, where other felting adventurers can sometimes get carried away with garish colours.

Images from Vogue.co.uk»