SHOWstudio - LONDON FASHION WEEK A/W 09

House of Holland

Posted Tuesday, 24th February '09 20:37

Henry Holland could always be counted on to buck any trend for sober, sombre and pseudo-intellectual dressing. It's simply not in his nature to tone anything down. Indeed, toning up was very much the theme of his Autumn/Winter collection, inspired by the colour-blocked, graduated shades of Pantone colour blocks and...

Meadham Kirchhoff

Posted Tuesday, 24th February '09 18:48

Last season's Meadham Kirchhoff collection preempted Autumn/Winter's obsession with armorial constructs - witness the duo's plated, patched and laced jeans and bleached-out denim doublets, hard sells at the time but suddenly looking just the ticket. This season there was similar excitement to see where the team would take those ideas...

Fashion East

Posted Tuesday, 24th February '09 18:23

London, as the smallest of the four fashion capitals, is a well-established and much-beloved breeding-ground for fledgling talent, welcoming new design with open arms and showcasing it to a worldwide stage. Could the confrontational, iconoclastic likes of Westwood, McQueen and most recently Pugh really have made their early presence felt...

David David

Posted Tuesday, 24th February '09 16:31

With the frenetic, frantic catwalk schedule wearing out even the best of us, it's a pleasure to break with the somewhat staid tradition of the catwalk show for a foray into film. Last season and this, London's 'Prints Charming' David David has opted out of runway presentation in favour of...

Peter Pilotto

Posted Tuesday, 24th February '09 16:24

Last season, it was Peter Pilotto who showed in the back-to-back early morning slot reserved for up-and-coming talent to watch - graduating from off schedule, to on schedule, to their own defined place on the schedule has been an uphill struggle, it seems. Still, their armorial print dresses of last...

Mary Katrantzou

Posted Tuesday, 24th February '09 13:46

A cash-generating spin-off for most designer brands, perfume rarely features on high fashion's centre-stage (bar an occasional sycophantic editorial credit pandering to the bank-rolling big-buck advertisers in some US publications). But for her fashion week debut, Mary Katrantzou explained her entire collection with a Coco Chanel quote: 'A woman who...

Mark Fast

Posted Tuesday, 24th February '09 13:13

What is a 'Fast' woman? Well, to our grandmothers' generation, 'fast' was a pejorative term, applied to those females of questionable moral integrity who would go to bed with a G.I. for a packet of nylons or a fresh pound of suet. Today, however, a 'Fast' woman is a product...

Giles

Posted Monday, 23rd February '09 20:38

When a blast of hard, cranked-up rock music and a burst of dry ice opened the Giles show, you had a feeling you were in for one of his rougher, tougher tumbles of a collection. Giles Deacon is a master of marrying street with chic, a punkish edge with haute...

Louise Goldin

Posted Monday, 23rd February '09 20:14

Our Unravelled project gave me a rather unfair advantage at the Louise Goldin show, and one I am unaccustomed too. Confident I knew pretty much exactly what I would be seeing on the runway after six months of painstaking preparation on Louise's part, and hours of documentary footage on ours,...

Roksanda Ilincic

Posted Monday, 23rd February '09 19:33

Remember Jacqueline de Ribes, dressed to excess eighties pop couture and Tom Wolfe's 'Social X-Rays' in ruffled, stiffened and fleshily padded cocktail frocks? Evidently Roksanda Ilincic does as she could have dedicated her Autumn/Winter collection to each and any one of them. This season, Roksanda loves a bit of ruff...

Marios Schwab

Posted Monday, 23rd February '09 18:43

If nothing else, so far we've ascertained that next season's woman is hard - I've used that adjective at least a dozen times in barely four days, and it's not lazy journalism. Marios Schwab took an uncharacteristically literal slant to this for his Autumn/Winter collection, taking inspiration from igneous rock...

Erdem

Posted Monday, 23rd February '09 15:52

Erdem is another of those designers whose soft, flower-strewn vision of rose-tinted femininity suddenly seems to hold no truck in these harsher times. It was interesting, therefore to see exactly how he would progress his brand of unabashed and unashamedly delicate femininity into the increasingly urgent call to arms for...

Luella

Posted Monday, 23rd February '09 14:51

The tough-girl mood emerging as key for next season's collections has always been Luella Bartley's forte, and with Bobby Gillespie front-row and the younger (and prettier) of the Geldof sisters on the runway, her Autumn/Winter 2009 ode to rock couldn't have come at a better time. Last season's pastel-strewn garden...

HOUSE OF FLORA

Posted Monday, 23rd February '09 13:18

Milliner Flora McLean debuted her first House of Flora dress design aspart of SHOWstudio's Future Tense project last year - and she turned to us again when producing her latest Autumn/Winter 2009 design - appropriately enough, titled 'Dress No. 2'. Slow and steady evidently wins the race - McLean plans...

Sibling

Posted Monday, 23rd February '09 12:58

A new knitwear label showing for the first time as part of London fashion week's MAN menswear showcase, Sibling is the brainchild of Sid Bryan, Joe Bates and Cozette McCreery. Young though this label may be, it does not want for experience: their hands have been behind knit-wittery for the...

Danielle Scutt

Posted Sunday, 22nd February '09 22:23

With the lurid pink branding of Barbie's fiftieth anniversary splashed about Danielle Scutt's Autumn/Winter show as sponsor, you'd be forgiven for thinking her brand of hard, aggressive power-dressing may have been mellowed by the adumbrated stereotypes of feminine fripperies. You'd be dead wrong. Scutt's vision has always been tough, and...

Aquascutum

Posted Sunday, 22nd February '09 19:30

Aquascutum occupies a tricky position in contemporary British fashion. Essentially the staid and dowdy sister of luxury goods behemoth Burberry, the brand is nevertheless resolved to revitalise its fortunes and reinvent itself as a high-fashion brand. Its seasonal showing at London fashion week, lavishly staged and packed with top models,...

Eley Kishimoto

Posted Sunday, 22nd February '09 17:34

Have Eley Kishimoto had their freeview box firmly tuned to reruns of the short-lived BBC sitcom 'The High Life' for the past six months? It would appear so, as their latest collection is an inspired and inspiring take on the much-maligned garb of the trolley dolly. The collection opened with...

Richard Nicoll

Posted Sunday, 22nd February '09 16:51

It is ironic that, besides sharing the same venue and show day, Christopher Kane and Richard Nicoll also shared the same overriding and seemingly contradictory theme: savage, aggressive lingerie. But it is a mark of their individual, inestimable talents that despite the similarities, each bore the designer's distinct signature. Nicoll's...

Christopher Kane

Posted Sunday, 22nd February '09 14:02

Fragility isn't a word we've been hearing for Autumn/Winter 2009, but at first glance it seemed to be Christopher Kane's leitmotif. In contrast to just about every other show, packed with armorial tweeds, buttoned and buttressed leathers and hefty padded shoulders - in short, a winter wardrobe built for...

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