Nobody likes birthdays, but in the fashion industry anniversaries are the perfect excuse to grease the marketing machine. In the last five days, London Fashion Week has turned 40 years old and the British Fashion Council, the non-profit organization that promotes and promotes designers based here both in their country and beyond its borders, has celebrated it No big announcements and no loud parties.
Instead, it has redoubled efforts to help firms and companies that, after the Covid crisis, have had to face the problems of Brexit, among others tariff barriers that endanger their survival.
It’s funny how time goes by, designers in London always look young. For example, Molly Goddard, with her eternal tulle that she once again makes look new, this time referencing the sixties silhouettes of Dior and Balenciaga. Erdem Moralioglu is also about to celebrate his own anniversary: in a few months his firm will celebrate twenty years of telling stories and this season’s one features Maria Callas and her representation of the tragedy of Medea at La Scala in Milan in 1953. As the figure of the artist, the collection was complicated in the best way, sometimes twisted, always extraordinary.
Creativity has a lot to do with obsession, and we all left St Bartholomew the Great, the oldest church in London where Simone Rocha had met us, obsessed. While the youngest ones yearn for the happier part of her creations full of crystals and bows, she decided to immerse herself in Queen Victoria’s mourning wardrobe. The Wake is the third part of a trilogy that began with Spring 2024 and continued with the collaboration with Jean Paul Gaultier, and tells the relationship between clothes and final determinations, between what we decide to preserve and what we cannot forget.
“When are you going to get a call from Chanel?” asked an industry friend in response to one of my Instagram stories from the Richard Quinn show. Quinn is one of those people who live happily with the limitations imposed by their own principles: her determination to make fashion from discarded or recycled materials does not allow her to follow certain paths, but her shows that are reminiscent of another era and that propose unique pieces Destined to outlive those who wear them, they are one of the best moments of this fashion week.
A look at the front row of the JW Anderson is enough to confirm that style is not a question of age, nor of the clothes one wears. The photographer Juergen Teller (was the iPhone abandoned under his chair his?), the model Marisa Berenson and the also model and writer Erin O’Connor shared flashes with the protagonists of Sex Education and witnessed Jonathan Anderson’s particular ode to the types strangest British characters. Ladies who look out onto the street through a tiny crack in the curtains, who hang out lingerie on laundry day or who walk around in slippers. Nobody like him to turn the banal into desirable.
The Marques’Almeida couple had not held a parade since the pandemic. With the soundtrack of Poor Things in the background and their family and friends on the catwalk, the Portuguese did what they do best (transforming brocades into flared pants and jackets with biker details, adding ruffles and finishing the garments with fringes) to the Once they showed that maturing has a lot to do with not forgetting how important the youngest are. Next, the KNWLS woman abandoned the night and the rave scene in favor of everyday life in the big city. Well thought out, perhaps instead of exchanging one thing for the other, she has realized that getting older also means discovering the side of choosing that does not mean doing without.
In the 40 years of London Fashion Week there have been two undisputed stars: Alexander McQueen and John Galliano. Both are present in the work of Welshman Paolo Carzana, the industry’s favorite new talent who can win this year’s LVMH Prize. The acknowledgments note for his Melancholic Mountain collection includes Sarah Burton and Andrew Bolton, which means he is not alone in his candidacy. He deserves it.
Galliano was also present at the Dilara Findikoglu show, who could not show last year due to financial reasons and returned with a theatrical staging choreographed by Pat Boguslawski, also responsible in part for the applause that the Maison’s haute couture show received. Margiela in Paris just a few weeks ago. Findikonglu gets angry when she sees what’s happening in the world, and her angry women make her unable to help but wonder if she shouldn’t get angry more often.
Without anger, but with confidence, Kazna Asker (the name of the British-Yemeni designer rang loud and clear a year ago when she showed the first hijab at a Central Saint Martins school graduation show) made us question things for that we fight these days, and if it would not be better to fight in the same way for others, in a presentation in the space for young talents offered by the British Fashion Council transformed into the living room of a family home.
“After a year I feel more confident,” commented Daniel Lee after presenting his third collection for Burberry under a giant tent in Victoria Park. “I have a great team, I believe in their opinions and with this collection we are all very excited. “I think we are all proud of her.” Justly. In this Burberry there is a lot of Burberry (the trench coats, the checks), but there are also the gestures that Daniel Lee (and team) execute with mastery: the use of color (they turn into attractive tones that without passing through his hands would not seduce anyone) , nonchalance as a key to activate elegance or the application of common details in an unusual way.
“Being a London brand, I like that it always has that slightly punk feel,” he said regarding the zippers strategically placed on the sleeves of the coats. “Thus, they are garments that are a little tough and last.” Burberry is so big that people attending this fashion week are using it as an excuse to spend one more night in London (I’m guilty on all charges), and it appeals to such a large audience that its audience is everyone. Lee’s vision seems to be fitting into those dimensions.
If you’ve come this far hoping to find out what you’re going to wear next winter, know that it’s not my style to narrow down or generalize, but I surrender to the evidence: hair. Synthetic fur, but fur, on coats, collars, applications on the sleeves, on bags. There has been hair everywhere. Oh, and the Burberry plaid scarf. Everything returns.