Tilda Swinton was there, the best possible advert for s clothes tall, lean, otherworldly, she was wearing one of his dark trouser suits and carried it off to perfection.
Do you have to be a Tilda to wear Ackermanns clothes? His silhouette is so powerful, his identity so unmistakable, it can sometimes be hard to picture anyone other than those of super-tall, slender proportions wearing him. But this collection was different. Yes, there was all the drama, romance and strength one would normally associate with Haider Ackermann, but he seemed to have made a concerted effort to strip back and simplify his designs less of the binding of waists and the jackets with flaring hip panels and more of the straight and narrow.
He opened with a long white coat that seemed to signal his fresh outlook. In fact all the coats looked amazing, from long and ankle-skimming in cashmere or beaver to the oversized army-style parka lined with snow-white shearling. The jackets were pretty incredible too, some of them also in shearling, neat, nipped-waisted and rising up at the back and down at the front; they looked incredibly luxurious and will no doubt be unimaginably expensive.
Also in the mix were leather pieces a narrow coat with saddle-bag pockets on the hips, a strikingly simple black trouser suit devoid of any detail whatsoever, ditto for the deep brown leather jacket worn with the collar up, a wool coat with a deep V neck and black trousers, a gorgeous one-shoulder velvet column dress that wrapped the neck. His favourite lacquered jacquards also made an appearance, in monochrome this seasons favourite colour; they reinforced his blade-like cutting and offered more in the way of traditional femininity, alongside his sensitive androgynous aesthetic.
Every season, Ackermann hones his craft and in the process finds a more commercial voice without losing any of the essence of his vision.
