McLaren Racing and Central Saint Martins Debut 'Designed

McLaren Racing has collaborated with Central Saint Martins on a new project called 'Designed to Race.' The initiative involved 46 students from the school's MA Fashion course, who created 12 looks by interpreting different chapters of the racing team's six-decade history.

The collection will debut at an exclusive show inside the McLaren Technology Centre this September, timed ahead of London Fashion Week. Student pieces will be staged alongside archive garments from McLaren's history.

The Collaborative Process

Students worked in small groups, each assigned a distinct era from McLaren's archive. The brief spanned from 1970s color-blocking to the current 'Papaya' moment. Technology partner Dell supplied the cohort with XPS laptops to develop the work from research to finished garments.

Some groups focused on iconic archive signifiers. These included references to James Hunt's driver overalls or Ayrton Senna's yellow helmet. Others took a more conceptual approach, translating car mechanics, chrome livery, aerodynamic geometry, and engineering into garment construction.

Design Interpretations Across Eras

The project revealed a wide range of design perspectives. For the 'Grit x Glamour' theme of the 1970s, one group included Coco Corbisiero, She Carmona, Taylor Paige and Tony Wang. Their work explored menswear archetypes and identity, featuring gender-fluid tailoring, research into British diasporic style, and textile work on memory.

Another group working on the same 1970s theme included Alesia Cîdă, Evangelina Polevik, Enzo Keuning and Nura Dhar. They brought a research-heavy viewpoint, blending archive-based luxury design and an engineering-meets-nature approach.

Two groups focused on the 'Engineered Athlete' theme covering the 2000s-2010s. One team, with Junya Barrett-Seward, Hayden Hamilton, Dongki Shin and Hyungjun Lim, built 'engineered success' through tailoring, outerwear construction, denim, and Korean systems-based design. Another, featuring Viktor Hartmann, Stela Kostomaj, Johannes Warnke and Stephanie Corbyn, use materials like seatbelts for frayed draping and cured carbon fiber for structural blazers.

A Snapshot of Contemporary Fashion Education

The collective output serves as a snapshot of current fashion education. The 46 designers drew from diverse personal and cultural references, including Zen philosophy, Afrofuturism, Kurdish identity, Dominican craft, and Korean systems design. All were filtered through the singular lens of McLaren's motorsport heritage.

McLaren cites a 2025 Global F1 Fan Survey, noting that roughly a third of Formula 1 followers now count fashion and style as a meaningful part of their engagement with the sport. The 'Designed to Race' project directly taps into this evolving intersection.

The runway show at the McLaren Technology Centre moves the conversation from the paddock to a new stage. It presents the final result of students re-engineering six decades of racing history into a forward-looking fashion collection.