I have a love-hate relationship with Fashion Week and all that it entails. On the one hand, my back hurts, my feet hurt, and I’m exhausted and feeling more than a little insecure about my clothing and general appearance. On the other hand, I’m mesmerized by all of the beautiful and amazing things surrounding me: the luscious fabrics, the impeccable tailoring, the theatricality of the runway show. One of my favorite parts of every show is the very end when the designer comes out to wave to the crowd. He or she usually looks frazzled and fried, but that’s when I clap the loudest because I know how many endless hours of work go into these productions and I know that everything rides on how the designs will be received. So I receive them enthusiastically.
My first show on the last day of London Fashion Week was Aminaka Wilmont, otherwise known as Maki Aminaka and Marcus Wilmont. Their Autumn/Winter 2008 collection, entitled Vector XXY, was inspired by the 80’s cult movie Tron and the show’s music can best be described as “science fiction heavy metal.” The super structured designs included high collars, sharply angled shoulders, bold cutouts, and cutaway coats. The designers chose jersey, wool, crepe de chine, and leather fabrics and worked in a black, white, and grey color palette (with red making a guest appearance toward the end). One of the standout pieces for me was a simple tailored dress with a shoulder-width wing-like piece fashioned out of pleated leather attached to the back. I have no idea what the final three looks were because I was so distracted by the headgear. The last models wore leather hoods with long “wires” that stuck out from the top of each hood, looped around, and reattached in random points on the hoods. The perfect conclusion to a sci-fi themed show.
After Aminaka Wilmont, I headed down the street for the Horace show. Horace, by Adam Entwhistle and Emma Hales, is an established, anti-mainstream, nouveau punk label. Both men and women came down the runway wearing layered tees and hoodies, cutout leggings and jeans. Many of the jackets and pants that would have been fashioned out of leather in “classic punk” were remand with PVC for a contemporary touch. Quite a lot of painstaking detail was evident in the Autumn/Winter 2008 collection, from the hand-dyed and hand-printed pieces to the loosely woven, laddered knits and the shiny fishnet hand-knotted out of thin strips of PVC. The outerwear selections were pierced with over a thousand bits of shrapnel. Very punk rock.
Next up was MAN. The MAN showcased three young new designers alongside the Topman Design premium label (the menswear line for the stylish London department store Topshop) in an annual collaboration between Topman and Fashion East. This year’s designers were Kesh, James Long, and Hans Christian Madsen.
Kesh is designed by (get this!) twenty-one year old Kesshia who, on top of designing this line, is also a DJ, a stylist, and the subject of a new BBC documentary. What a slacker. Her colorful collection included quilted fabric, exposed stitching, clear plastic pockets, and apple appliqués.
James Long’s collection was all about outerwear. He used lots of creams, dark blues, grays, and blacks. Leather, sheepskin, and fur (or faux fur) were used to create wonderfully dramatic coats that look like they could withstand a nuclear winter.
Hans Christian Madsen’s collection was fairly minimalist. It featured lots of hoodies and also a few sweaters that can only be described as “Bill Cosby sweaters” circa 1985. Enough said.
Finally Topman Design. Another colorful collection, this one was, of course, very retail-driven and included both casual pieces as well as suits. One recurring design element was a hood/baseball cap hybrid attached to several coats. A strong collection.
I tried and failed to get into the last two shows of London Fashion Week. Seems everyone else had the same idea. So my dramatic week ended on an anticlimactic note, when the polite guy working the door for the Julien McDonald told me “sorry luv, we’ve hit capacity.”
