London Fashion Week Round Up

Image: Mother of Pearl

Over the weekend The Vendeur visited London Fashion Week. It was a weekend of protest both on and off the catwalk as the fashion world wrestled with issues such as climate change and Brexit. Here is our London Fashion Week Round Up.

Protest and unrest is in the air. On the first day of London Fashion Week, school students stopped traffic in Trafalgar Square to protest against Climate Change. Political and economic uncertainty around Brexit are forefront in many Brit’s minds. Not least in the mind’s of our creatives. So maybe it was correct that many used Fashion Week as an opportunity to pay homage to the Britain they love. Time honored tartans, tailoring and wools were everywhere, an extension of our current obsession with Heritage Fashion. However many designers repurposed them, cutting them up and mixing them together to create patchwork pieces. It was a perfect representation of a nation divided.

Matty Bovan’s collection Uncertain Times was a mashup of ‘salvaged stuff that witches would wear’. Taking the theme one step further, he worked with quintessentially British brand Liberty, blowing up their prints and chopping them in with other fabrics. Vivienne Westwood’s show also riffed on the current feeling. She showed her traditional tartans, corsets and scarves, a tribute maybe to Queen and Country? However she couldn’t resist a cheeky stab at over consumption. Hand written protest slogans appeared scrawled over clothes and accessories.

Our highlight of London Fashion Week though has to be Mother of Pearl’s giant ball pit. Created in a church in Fitzrovia, it was designed to represent the huge amount of plastic waste in the ocean. Creative Director Amy Powney can’t help but make her sustainable mission fun! As for the collection, Powney mixed polka dots with leopard prints and florals on her signature oversize, boyish shapes. Thank god it’s already available to buy now because we want everything! The show also coincided with a series of talks and a video created with BBC Earth to address urgent climate issues and how the fashion industry can make a positive difference. View the video here.

The British sense of humour was not lost on Irish born Richard Malone either. Never afraid to play with colour and texture, the show was a melting pot of ideas. Of course he worked keenly with recycled cottons, and created ‘ fun fur’ stoles made from repurposed dog beds! The result was a colourful and humorous take on Autumn dressing. SHOPYTE however provided a contradiction to the loud fabric mixes seen elsewhere. The elegant, and modest collection of dresses and coats stuck to a palette of neutrals and pastels. The use of organic, natural fibres to create fluid silhouettes felt grown up and ideal for the modern working woman.

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