A buzzy, rebellious mood dominates London Fashion Week
As London fashion week comes to a close, Susie Lau reports from the front row on the event’s new buzzy mood, Christopher Kane’s ‘crash and repair’ and youthful rebellion.
London Fashion Week has once again been too brief and yet bursting with ideas. As the journalists honked their way through traffic from one show to another, there was the feeling that the schedule was overflowing, with more presentations, digital screenings and industry talks for the public to take in. The result of this, coupled with the new central location in Soho, is that London Fashion Week felt like it was more in your face than when it was tucked away at Somerset House, with an increased awareness among the public. Whether local residents, workers or passing tourists liked it or not, the buzz in Soho created by LFW was amplified.
True to form
Rest on your laurels and you get accused of being boring. Jerk from one idea to the next and you’re inconsistent. Luckily Christopher Kane – LFW’s golden boy - has struck a balance between retaining the cornerstones of his brand while moving things forward to somewhere new.
His latest collection Crash and Repair was inspired by the brilliant but damaged minds he encountered in art therapy sessions and outsider artists in general. All those well-loved Kane tropes were present – the neon (although the designer called it acid), fractured lace dresses and plastic in the form of cable ties used as chokers and fastenings on clothes. Everything felt sharper and perhaps just a bit unhinged, which is how you want a Kane collection to be. It was a jolting collection to add to the many in the back catalogue.
Marques ‘Almeida has just won the coveted LVMH Prize and instead of blowing the budget to befit their newly elevated status, the duo dialled it back to their humble beginnings, fraying, distressing and manipulating fabric. Their hacked-up denim was present but they added a faded glamour in the form of voluminous chiffon and silk ruffles, roughed up at the edges by hand. Inspired by the singer-songwriter Fiona Apple as well as Jaz, their eclectically dressed muse, Marques ‘Almeida reaffirmed what they’re all about and why their clothes resonate with a coming-of-age generation. Erdem Moriaglu also knows his ‘girl’. She’s a pioneer woman on a prairie in high-necked Edwardiana, awash with embroidered florals. Combine that with the vibes of a stormy English period drama – Far from the Madding Crowd or Jane Eyre perhaps – and you have yourself a mise-en-scènethat fits right into Moriaglu’s penchant for an ethereal narrative. These designers were the highlights because their signature felt assured.
Changing their tune
In contrast, changing a signature can also make for evolution. Peter Pilotto’s prints have always erred towards the graphic, the bold and sometimes the zany. For spring/summer, they held back the prints and instead smocked, embroidered and adorned their dresses and blouses with frills galore. If that sounds saccharine, it wasn’t. The smocking was anything but traditional with the stitches rendered in bright neon hues and sharp patterns. The label’s shift away from print has been building up for a while, and this season they found their groove by pushing new techniques.
Burberry also took a different turn, in both their show format and their aesthetic. Instead of an easy-listening indie band, Christopher Bailey had ‘80s singer Alison Moyet belting out her greatest hits to an enraptured audience. The clothes also took on a more utilitarian turn with nylon backpacks, anoraks worn over flimsy slip dresses, styled like a Glastonbury uniform. However the story here wasn’t the seasonal shifts but Burberry’s channel launch on Apple’s new music-streaming service. We left with melodies ringing in our ears.
The Kids are alright
The ‘kids’ of fashion week often get the best crowds, and a diverse throng piled in to cheer on former Fashion East alumni Ashley Williams, Claire Barrow and Ryan Lo. Williams had mardy girls stomping in bodies emblazoned with slogans, including ‘I’m in a bad mood.’ They also wore diamanté-encrusted, bias-cut gowns coupled with racy fishnets, neon-pink clogs and red patent trenches. Williams' work has always leaned towards the fun and funky (or to use her own phrase, "funky offish") but with an angrier collection the rebellious spirit of London continued to flourish.
Claire Barrow's presentation was a moving one, as street-cast models played instruments against a backdrop of dissonant synths to represent a fightback against modern-day technology. Barrow's idiosyncratic illustrated garments have always been a reflection of society but here her voice felt louder as she presented a tableau of poetic protest. Ryan Lo ended LFW with an unabashed, fun-filled display of hyper-kawaii femininity. His models were adorned with challah-bread loops and wore frill-fronted knee-high socks, brocade princess coat and knitted swiss-dot ruffle dresses. There’s something unapologetically kitsch and cutesy about what Lo does and on the last day of LFW when younger designers get to shine, it felt like the right note to end on.
Susie Lau is a fashion journalist who blogs at stylebubble.co.uk. She is covering New York, London, Milan and Paris Fashion Weeks for BBC Culture.