For many designers, the lingering tension between art and commerce creates a turmoil that can be a powerful fuel. Settling and calming the contrast can be liberating though, and "free" might be the perfect way to describe how we found Faustine Steinmetz at the end of her hallway-like presentation inside Spitalfields Market in East London.

These images by Laura Cassidy

"I have this feeling like, 'Ah, now I can just make some regular jeans!'" she said, quite exuberantly. Not that anything this French-born Brit makes is regular, just relatively so when taken in the context of the fantastic crystal and crystal-like formations that stud the slippers, glasses, pants, tops and more in her spring collection.

In a recent image-driven project with photographer Arnaud Lajeunie, Novembre Magazine fashion director Georgia Pendlebury and art director Aude Debout, Faustine collaborated with the artist Luke Brooks, who recreated her ready-to-wear in foam. Yeah, foam.

The unexpected material switched on a magical lightbulb in the designer, and gave her an art-for-arts-sake pursuit that made the demands of the fashion industry seem somehow more doable. Like, over here could be her pure expression, and over there could be what she offers her fans and retail partners.

For Saturday's presentation, she included both.

These images by Portia Hunt

See, Faustine's ambition is to be no less than "Levi's on acid." How to get a look that's wearable and trippy enough to sit alongside fine art? She reached out to the Swarovski company and with their blessing and assistance created logo denim, hand-dyed ikats and open weaves that are practically plastered with opalescence and shine.

Plaques-like the cards you see mounted near paintings in a gallery or museum-described the work inside each cubby, where painted models stretched out in looks that felt somehow tied to the '90s even as they rocked-out into some psychedelic space and time. (Faustine seems to love the diorama format; remember last season?)

This image by Portia Hunt

"The overshot weave technique was used to produce the word Steinmetz over a base of denim. The fabric was then dip-dyed to create a gradient."

and

"Using old recycled denim as a base and inspired by the kinds of rocks which have become overgrown with crystals and ice, recycled foam and fabric was hand sculpted and hand painted alongside Swarovski to recreate the same effect."

Yes, that's a model (she's been painted), but no those aren't jeans; they're foam.
So are the crystal formations. This image by Laura Cassidy.

Everything Faustine does takes time. The very equipment on which she makes the majority of her work took time to achieve its pedigree-it's a vintage countermarch loom. A single meter of handwoven cotton fabric takes eight hours to produce. Picture a machine whipping out the same amount in seconds.

This image by Laura Cassidy

In this way, the symbolism of the ancient, slow-growing crystalline rocks is a perfect one for Faustine, but so is our contemporary obsession with amethysts, sapphires and bulbous quartz. The designer told us that this collection represents her take on modern designer denim: it's painstaking, couture, conceptual, glittery and primordial.

In an era of denim-everything, it gives denim a new multifaceted face.

Long live denim, long live Faustine Steinmetz.

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-Laura Cassidy