By: Rebecca Lowthorpe Follow @Rebecca_ELLE
Burberry (1), Christopher Kane (2) and Roksanda Ilincic (3)
Paloma Faith singing live at the foot of the catwalk may have hit a few shrill notes, but not Christopher Bailey, Burberrys chief creative officer, who put out The Bloomsbury Girls, a smoothly structured, richly crafted collection that took its inspiration from that very British set and Charleston, the country manor where writers, painters and intellectuals ritually met.
As ever, the brand at the forefront of digital and social media had a few tricks up its sleeve not withstanding Harry Styles whose irrepressible fans clogging the pathway to the Hyde Park show venue sent Twitter and Instagram into hyperdrive even before hed reached his seat. There was live show music performed by Faith, Ed Harcourt and Rhodes (all available to download on itunes). Pieces from the collection were, as usual, available to buy off the runway on burberry.com. Plus the brand had collaborated with WeChat, the worlds second largest social media platform (600 million users) where exclusive content was downloadable via the app store, including front row guests sharing their show journey. As for the clothes, it was an art class in colour, print and paint each bag, shoe and belt was a hand-painted one off. If the hand-painting idea recalled last seasons Chanel, the silhouettes couldnt have been more on-brand luxurious long layers, including contrasting scarves that were clasped at the waist with wide duffle-toggle belts, the occasional blanket or rug slung over one shoulder. Add to all that, Cara, Edie and Suki modelling and it was visual-social-digital theatre befitting Burberrys stature.
There is no doubt that is Londons wunderkind. In a league of his own, he sets a self-imposed bar that is so high, only a top international designer can reach it. And its not just because
Kering, the luxury conglomerate, owns 51 per cent of his label. His focus, consistency, execution and sheer breadth of ideas in a single collection is what makes him the hottest ticket at London Fashion Week. And so todays exceptional show was, for Kane, business as usual: We always focus on key pieces so theres always a great dress, great trousers, great jackets we do really well in those segments, said the designer backstage, matter-of-factly, while pinned to the wall by journalists. One asked: Can you not restrain yourself from showing everything? To which he laughed: Why would I? Its better to get it out; its good to explode. The look was vintage Kane quite literally so in terms of the utility buckles that fastened his new bags which he first developed for his 2006 Central Saint Martins graduation show. Its good to link back, he said. The attitude was pure Kane territory too the cool girl, slouching down the runway in an inky oversized trouser suit with nylon abattoir shoes. Nylon played a huge part puckered, ruffled, wadded, embroidered, embedded with Hologram flowers and even trimmed with Palomino hued fur. The last exits played on the theme of moving sculpture, inspired by flip books, they resembled pages of a book one dress rendered in no less than 40 organza pages.
With Gary Cards industrial-sculptural installation as a backdrop and taking inspiration from American artist Mel Bochner and sculptor Jessica Stockholder,
Roksanda Ilincics stunning collection made her stock rise again. Just like the art that influences her, buying a piece would be an investment. She started out unexpectedly with a soft beige wool dress with a single abstract shape in burgundy cut into its skirt, then she built great odd angular blocks of colour from turquoise through claret and navy until she reached a great patchworked fur coat. The designer studied architecture before fashion and you could see this more clearly than ever, especially in the rich surface detail where she had embroidered plastic on dresses that stood away from the body. She called the one covered in shards of multi-coloured shiny plastic scraps her M and Ms dress. Like , she was interested in making luxury out of recycled leftovers these, it turned out, were the remnants from pre-fall. Salvaged luxury what a neat idea! Could this be the most interesting trend to come out of London?
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