GilesGiles Deacon's show of blood-streaked and chilling femme fatales in sports couture concoctions and billowing capes stood out for its unrelenting focus and technique on a hectic Wednesday that was packed with theatre. Inspired by the sinister tale of The Masque of the Red Death, his macabre story struck the right balance between inspiration and reality.
ErdemErdem's collection was a gorgeous cavalcade of colour, wondrous prints and beautifully sculpted architectural shapes and contours. The looks were tempered with gorgeous details such as couture-like carnations, the show lending a heightened elegance and passion in a week suffused with anarchy and theatre.
Todd Lynn
Todd Lynn showed that less is most definitely more and presented a slick, sexy collection that was more about attitude than overcomplexity. Less genderless than his previous collections, it suggested a woman with an assurance of her own sexuality and personal style enough not to have to take refuge in the cliché of androgyny.
Christopher Kane
Perhaps the most justifiably ethereal collection of the week, the prodigious talent of Kane continues from strength to strength as the riddle of his airy/fitted look continued into a sophisticated, focused collection that combined barely-there chiffon with shimmering black sequins and tight, cable-like bodice lines.
Marios Schwab
This season, Schwab took the full-length concept and ran with it. Taking a seemingly simple idea, he engaged with it and the audience who witnessed its various incarnations, alterations and augmentations with gold lamé, cropped jackets and trousers revealed by artful rips in the tight, stretched dresses.
-David J Paw for Haute Mimi
Greek- born designer Mary Katrantzou is one of the new names in the LFW show schedule but not in the fashion industry: since her collection A/W 2008 following the MA at Central Saint Martins, she has already got a lot of attention on her and after this first amazing show we can see why. Trompe l’oeil digital effect prints inspired by perfume bottles: the choice already invokes the sinuosity of the woman’s body…the dress is the print…the print is the dress. The colours are bright and sharp, the graphics oversized and enlarged, but because the dresses themselves are simple in shape, nothing goes overboard. And as Coco Chanel said “A Woman that does not wear perfume has no future”, we think Mary will have a great one. Click here for more info.
