Trend-setting brits shine at LFW
Print Edition
BURBERRY may have claimed top billing at LFW but there were also honorable contributions from Victoria Beckham, Vivienne Westwood and Kane.
Burberry
Burberry earned its place, again, as one of the top shows at the recent London Fashion Week with a widely ranging catwalk show that honored the British brand’s long tradition but showed it is still ready to mix it up and set trends.
Chief Creative Officer Riccardo Tisci showed in his second collection that he is perfectly comfortable stretching the Burberry look to keep its younger fans happy while easily switching gears to create classic, severely tailored ensembles that ooze chic.
The two sides of the Burberry coin were reflected in the two adjacent rooms where the collection was shown.
In one room a sedate auditorium with comfortable, padded seats; the other a raucous wide-open space ringed by a climbing gym of the type young kids would use.
The transition was obvious as models went from street-style clothes — oversize puffer jackets, metallic ornamentation, revealing slip dresses, silver boots, faux fur, big red plastic sneakers — to subtle, timeless outfits in muted fall colors.
Christopher Kane
Last season’s theme was “sexual cannibalism,” but on Monday, Christopher Kane made the “rubberist” fetish a focal point of his new collection. It’s best not to ask too many questions of the designer, who earlier built a show around “The Joy of Sex,” a graphically illustrated book first published in 1972.
The show was eclectic in the extreme. Many models wore what Kane called “large cupcake skirts.” They were short and somewhat structured and paired with low-cut tops or partially sheer body suits.
The pieces were imaginative and revealing: a sweater dress that transitioned into a gauzy fabric as it neared the waist; a lime-green feathery mini-dress and a regal, dark blue dress with metallic neck decorations that looked like something Cleopatra might have worn. Kane likes to pair elegant, well-made dresses with slouchy items like T-shirts, in this show often emblazoned with a red “Rubberist” logo.
“This show is called ‘liquid ladies,’” Kane said.
“It’s all about the essence of women, of strong women, the fluidity of women.”
Victoria Beckham
The front row at Victoria Beckham’s runway show has a younger average age than the VIP seats at other shows. The designer’s youngest, 7-year-old Harper, sat on her dad’s lap for a cuddle as he chatted amiably with American Vogue editor Anna Wintour.
The designer said she wanted to channel “modern femininity” and cinematic drama for the collection and had in mind a particular image of the woman wearing her clothes.
“She’s proper but she’s definitely not prim,” Beckham said. The result was a mix of ladylike classics: tailored check blazers, tweeds, argyle jumpers, silky blouses neatly tucked into pencil skirts — with saucy, knee-high, open-toed sock boots in lipstick red or leopard, or bright satin stilettos in citrus and bright fuchsia.
Vivienne Westwood
The grand dame of British fashion, Vivienne Westwood, put fashion on the back burner and turned her catwalk show into a broadside against climate change, corporate greed and other ills.
Westwood went into guerrilla theater mode for this latest show. It featured angry models stopping in the middle of the catwalk to denounce the planet’s problems, finding time to complain about artificial intelligence, robots, Brexit and a whole lot more.
The first model set the tone by announcing the world would be dead unless something is done this year. The models warned, to a percussive, threatening sound track, that humanity would soon go deaf and blind and have squished internal organs.
A free speech advocate wore a slogan-covered jacket, saying it was to honor Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks who in 2012 took asylum in Ecuador’s Embassy in London to avoid extradition. One model with a microphone proclaimed, “Hollywood has made us into zombies.”
A wittier riposte came from the model who announced, “England is going to die from irony.”
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