London Fashion Week Ss'17

LONDON FASHION WEEK

(Spring Summer'17)

London Fashion Week is the place to look for underground trends that the rest of us will eventually catch onto. With young designers straight out of Central Saint Martins (a breeding ground for talent like Riccardo Tisci, Stella McCartney, and the late Alexander McQueen) showing alongside international powerhouses like Burberry and Top-shop, the energy is such that you’d almost forget it was only five days long.

A few collections stood out as especially memorable this season: J.W. Anderson’s , time-traveling tour de force, Preen’s sequin-and-ruffle-clad cool-girl coven, and Christopher Kane’s glorious mishmash of memories at his 10th anniversary show. Of course, a few trends emerged throughout the week, too.

Below, see the five you need to know for Spring ’17.

Christopher Kane

Those shoes - souped-up in marbled prints or in wet look glossy brown and decorated with a smattering of crystals - will be the take home item that you'll be seeing everywhere come spring. Kane is celebrating his tenth anniversary this year and he was right to revisit some hits of the last decade, even going right back to his debut 2007 show that set his star in ascent, with those stretch lace mini dresses bursting with ruffles and jangling with gold rings, this time, not in neon but in shades of teal and elsewhere hues of mud and rust.

Highlights-

PREEN BY THORANTON BREGAZZI

Their collection was vivacious and multifarious, packed with influences and fabulous clothes you felt women would take real joy in wearing - something which has been strangely lacking so far this season. Backstage after the show, the duo said they had been thinking about "the breakdown of society" post-Brexit and subsequently about cults and subcultures: skin heads, punks, Japanese pastel punks, witches.

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BURBERRY

The collection was influenced by Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando – a love letter to the past and to English history and a kind of dressing up box to visit and revisit,’

There were just the sort of things you want in your wardrobe all year long. Striped silk pyjama trousers, louche silk dressing gown coats in washed out paisley prints, ruffled over-sized shirts, tailored jackets – again oversized with just enough military detailing - were all mish-mashed together.

Highlights-

VERSUS

This was a tough, urban collection for Versace’s sister line, which is 20 years old this year.

The men’s and women’s show opened with one of the models of the moment Bella Hadid, whose sister Gigi was seated front row with her boyfriend, the ex One Direction singer Zayn Malik.

The black leather jacket she wore with knee-length biker boots and micro shorts (all the better to display a gym-honed derrière) was the first of many plays on jackets. Bikers came cropped or sleeveless, bombers were also short or over-sized and belted, worn in the style of a dress, and parachute nylon coats featured scuba panels.

Highlights-

JW ANDERSON

SS17 collection for JW Anderson was a wellspring of ideas inspired by — erm, that unlikely totem of femininity Henry VIII, replete with leg-o-mutton sleeves, burlap day dresses and quilted corsetry that all recalled the Tudor monarch.

While the archetypal alpha male might not be an obvious choice of muse for a womenswear designer, Anderson had been excited by the challenge of presenting “relics of aggressive masculinity” in a softer and more feminine way. And the show was emphatically girly.

The bold-chested and wide shouldered silhouette had been softened with gentler fabrics. Neutral, natural fabrics were balanced by sherbet-colored skirts and bold prints. Hems fell in asymmetric lengths from a dropped waist, while the Renaissance ruff collar and cuff were re imagined in rolls of

jersey wool.

Anderson had used traditional materials and retooled them. Quilted linen details drew attention to strange and abstract parts of the body: a pair of jeans with knee patches gave them a sense of “urban Armour” he explained: a top fluttered with tissue thin linen handkerchiefs. And there were ongoing experiments with volume: shirting was cut into strips to create a voluminous ripple down the sleeve, while a knitted skirt with gathered waist fell below the knee like a deflating balloon.

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MULBERRY

The Spanish designer Johnny Coca had taken the striped blazer as inspiration to create a modern take on the uniform. Blazers were boxy and worn with culottes, cut loose with front pleats to look like skirts. The wools had been woven in England by a school supplier and were worn with a curve-heeled mule which gave the prep-school ensembles a flamboyant French revolutionary flourish.

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