After a tentative comeback last season, London Fashion Week has hit the ground running again. Without big names, but as always with a breeding ground for young talent.
The 1989 hit from Soul II Soul played non-stop on Monday night at The Savoy, a packed art deco theater on the Strand in London. Ozwald Boateng made his first appearance there in twelve years. The respected designer, who was artistic director of the Givenchy men’s collections between 2003 and 2007, dedicated his comeback to the idea of ”British Black Excellence” with more than a hundred models.
Life also seems to have returned to London itself.
Hardly anyone wears a face mask anymore. Everything seems to be the same as before. However, that is not entirely true. One empty department store follows another on Oxford Street, the main shopping street. House of Fraser, Debenhams and Topshop will never open their doors again. John Lewis and Marks & Spencer are shrinking. Only Selfridges continues to grow.
London Fashion Week made a tentative comeback last September. This season, the offer has been increased: 131 designers are on the official calendar, including numerous catwalk shows. But there are clouds in the sky. The biggest attraction, Burberry, has been absent for several seasons. This will not change until further notice. The only British label that really matters in the luxury sector will be showing itself in London, but only on March 11th, after Paris Fashion Week.
Other well-known names were not represented last week either. Like JW Anderson, Mary Katrantzou or Victoria Beckham (we saw them front row at Supriya Lele’s show). On the other hand, Raf Simons has suddenly appeared on the calendar. However, with a digital show in which he combines fleece with latex and Breughel with Robocop.
hatchery
London has long had a reputation as a hotbed for young and untamed talent. That talent is still there. The British Fashion Council, the organization behind fashion week, hosted them in an old hotel around the corner from Selfridges for “New Gen,” a sort of fashion week-within-a-fashion week, featuring designers like Labrum, Matty Bovan and Stefan Cooke .
Big names make the avant-garde easier to digest, and they attract powerful buyers and the press. Molly Goddard, Erdem, Richard Quinn and Simone Rocha, the big names of this edition of London Fashion Week, may be relatively well known – and they are excellent designers too – but when it comes to charisma they can’t match the Guccis and Diors of the world.
Goddard was great: she gave her fairytale dresses a certain edge by pairing them with wool sweaters and sturdy shoes. The best soundtrack of the week, with old rock ‘n’ roll classics.
A few years ago, Richard Quinn had the Queen in the front row in person, and this time Anna Wintour arrived in her chauffeur-driven Range Rover. The show was accompanied by a classical orchestra and a choir. Quinn wrapped historical couture – most notably by Balenciaga – in his usual floral patterns.
“Big in London” could also be the French company Paul & Joe, which was once a medium-sized brand in Paris but has shrunk significantly in recent years. Founder Sophie Mechaly showed for the second time during London Fashion Week at the Charterhouse, a Harry Potter (officially: Tudor)-style building complex that was, among other things, a monastery and a boys’ boarding school. The boys from Paul & Joe in their sailor collar sweaters and smart suits were just a little more convincing than the girls in their sometimes overly cute outfits.
The New London Guard
But London is counting mostly on the next generations – the talents who may or may not change fashion dramatically. Who will succeed John Galliano and Simone Rocha? Conner Ives, maybe? The American, London-based designer, who graduated from Central Saint Martins just last year, has already been nominated for the LVMH Prize, the most important award for young fashion talent. He opened London Fashion Week on Friday with a debut show dedicated to the American archetypes, from cowgirl to vice presidential wife. There was a Jackie Kennedy and an editor à la Anna Wintour. Ives loves fun and glamour, but he’s a child of his time – the materials he uses are second-hand.
Young Irish designer Robyn Lynch also showed for the first time. Earlier this year, she began a collaboration with sportswear brand Columbia, using the label’s leftover stock to create new garments, including coveted bulky sports jackets. The collaboration continues. “It’s a great opportunity for me to work with materials that I would never otherwise have access to as a young, independent designer,” said Lynch during a preview via Zoom. Also nice: the digital reconstructions of Lynch’s father’s football jerseys, distorted and magically transformed into fashion.
Steven Stokey Daley, another men’s designer, had one of the finest shows for his SS Daley label. This had a lot to do with the romantic backdrops scattered around the room: an unmade bed, some antique armchairs, a long dining table that doubled as a catwalk, flowers, and old books. The show itself was partly a ballet performance. And the clothes? The wardrobes of the different generations of castle residents, from nobility to servants, are all jumbled together. We quote this lovely description from the press release: “A leather vest is cut from diamonds of excess leather and decorated with tassels. It is worn with panties, as if a half-dressed houseguest was sneaking down the aisle late at night to get to his male lover.”
The show by Nensi Dojaka, the big winner of the 2021 LVMH Prize, was also eagerly awaited. Dojaka has a clear visual vocabulary: “body proud”, almost lingerie, complex and fragile, in the tradition of Mugler, but younger and without the “male gaze” of the recently deceased master. “This time, I mainly wanted to expand my concept,” she said backstage. That meant, among other things, that from now on larger women could also fit into their “bodycon” jumpsuits and sweater dresses – and model Paloma Elsesser ran along. Dojaka also experimented with more wintry fabrics, and there were fewer short skirts.
Feng Chen Wang made digital headlines with the outfits she designed for the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics. For Winter 2022, she draws inspiration from the beauty of imperfection and the cyclical nature of construction and deconstruction. And she underlined this by combining her presentation with an exhibition of young artists. In a gallery next to the Vogue House, the illustrious headquarters of the glossy publisher Condé Nast.
What is striking in London is the chasm between the heirs to punk and the fashion designers who are more interested in “party dresses” for the bourgeoisie. Halpern bridged that gap with an exhibition at Brixton Rec, a gigantic, brutalist 1980s sports complex that was demolished a few years ago. Glamor in a concrete setting.
‘Black Pride’
The show by Ozwald Boateng formed the conclusion of the fashion week. With a reported crowd of around a thousand spectators and a hundred models and performers on stage at the Savoy Theatre, it was the week’s biggest event despite not being on the official London Fashion Week calendar. The spectacle, which was all about “British Black Excellence”, started more than an hour late.
As a drummer banged his drums, the names of dozens of Britain’s leading black entertainers were projected onto the backdrop. The show lasted more than half an hour, with groups of models in Boateng’s smart suits – he began his career as a tailor on Saville Row – and more “ethnic” garments, for lack of a better word (including kente balaclavas). Dizzee Rascal, Goldie and Idris Elba ran. In the finale we got to hear “Back To Life” again, this time in a live performance with a gospel choir. A strong moment. After that: “Back to reality”.
This translated post previously appeared on FashionUnited.nl.