What We Saw at London Fashion Week
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LONDON — Farms aren’t normally a source of stylistic inspiration for the upper echelons of fashion. But at London Fashion Week, it felt as if some designers had barnyards on the brain.
Simone Rocha had hay fever — she packed her sheer layered skirts with similar-looking stuff — and Christopher Kane offered tops and column gowns with kitschy AI-generated prints of pigs, chicks and rats. S.S. Daley presented knits with one of his favorite recurring motifs — the duck — as did Daniel Lee, whose debut collection for Burberry was filled with wacky mallard prints, feathery fronds and a knitted duck bonnet with a beak and legs. Why?
“Because ducks are so British and associated with rain,” Mr. Lee said after the show.
As Britain continues to grapple with its ongoing national identity crisis, the turn to familiar terrain — think English eccentricity and the green and pleasant land — should perhaps not feel surprising. But there was also more to this season than that.
Beyond the big Burberry reveal, here are some of the week’s most memorable moments.
Stylized sexuality for women — by women — was a major moment …
Dilara Findikoglu has become one of the must-see shows in London in recent seasons. The Turkish-British designer uses her clothes to explore ideas of defiant female sexuality and emancipation, often with a witchy twist. Her latest collection, inspired in part by the women’s protest movement in Iran, weaponized the female body in a push and pull between armor and undress, climaxing in a gothic finale dress with a superimposed skirt and bodice made from gleaming silver knives.
Ms. Findikoglu is part of a movement redefining sexy dressing for the female gaze. Those designers include Dimitra Petsa, whose Di Petsa show featured wet-look illusion dresses inspired by Greek goddesses, and Karoline Vitto, part of the Fashion East talent incubator, who built confidently on her size-inclusive philosophy using signatures like metal inserts and cutouts. Also, see Nensi Dojaka, who presented more of her lingerie-cum-ready-to-wear with a new level of creative accomplishment and commercial savvy.
… as were florals for fall.
Florals for spring are famously not groundbreaking, as any fan of “The Devil Wears Prada” would know. Perhaps that’s why plenty of London designers had them out on the runways for fall instead.
Few went quite as far as Richard Quinn, for whom florals are a style hallmark and whose set was so laden with blooms on and off the runway that guests were encouraged to make bouquets to take away after the show. Emilia Wickstead offset her grungy “Twin Peaks”-inspired collection with some posy prints, and Erdem, preoccupied this season with fallen women of Georgian London, offered ghostly glamour with trompe l’oeil greenery that wound its way across his jewel-tone taffeta skirts.
The Chinese designer Susan Fang made us stop and smell the roses — literally — with a runway of crushed petals and delicately beaded looks in pastel shades that shimmered and danced with what looked like crystallized droplets. Courtesy of her dad, who works for Shanghai’s fire safety department, Ms. Fang also created rose-scented dresses with water-mist wings that sprayed scent as the models walked.
Moncler brought the stars out …
This season, the most celebrity sightings were not at a runway front row. Instead, Justin and Hailey Bieber, Serena Williams, Lewis Hamilton and Charli XCX could be found at the gargantuan “Art of Genius” presentation hosted by Moncler after the Burberry show. The Italian brand best known for pricey puffer jackets blew the budget on the London iteration of its Genius project, in which Moncler enlists designers and guest artists to reimagine its trademark outerwear, which then is revealed to the thousands of fans who have signed up for free tickets to the event.
They could go to a foam party hosted by Palm Angels; record songs in booths by Jay-Z’s Roc Nation; play with robots that respond to human interaction, courtesy of the Japanese label FRGMT; or listen to Alicia Keys, who played a live set. Also there? Pharrell Williams, fresh from his appointment last week as the new creative director of men’s wear at Louis Vuitton.
… and two British actors made the runways a stage.
February is not just a time of fashion shows. It’s also Hollywood awards season, meaning that actors and actresses are busy cruising red carpets rather than popping up at runway shows. Except, it would appear, for Florence Pugh.
The British star didn’t just show her face at the Harris Reed show last week, the first on the London Fashion Week calendar. She opened the entire affair, emerging into the round in a sparkling harlequin dress with a black corset, slithering cutaways and a huge halo-like topper.
“In a sometimes judgmental world, our costumes can change who we want to be seen as and who we are destined to be,” Ms. Pugh declared to the audience. Days later, at the BAFTA awards, she wore a luminous orange gown from Nina Ricci, where Mr. Reed is now the creative director. His debut collection for the house is to be unveiled in Paris next month.
Mr. Reed was not the only talent to harness some serious thespian energy. At S.S. Daley, Ian McKellen emerged from the shadows in a sailor’s cap and peacoat for a raspy recital of Tennyson’s “The Coming of Arthur.” Anna Wintour, famously a fan of the West End, smiled serenely as the performance unfolded at her feet.
Some designers tested the boundaries of taste.
Christopher Kane has always relished being a provocateur. This season, amid sweeping bustles and embroidered florals, he showed creepy dresses covered in AI-generated swarms of rats, chickens and piglets, which he later explained were for “those who desire clothes that challenge sartorial standards.”
As more and more brands pivot toward a pared-back wearability, where would fashion be without those who continually push the envelope?
Mowalola Ogunlesi, the 27-year-old Nigerian designer who was handpicked by Kanye West to oversee the collaboration between his Yeezy brand and Gap, clearly thrives on straddling that line. Her “bumster” trousers came closer to “thighsters,” alongside reworked parody corporate logos and an “insert disc here” dress with an arrow pointing toward the model’s nether regions. (It was a collection inspired in part by the blurring of lines between life and tech.)
And so does Jonathan Anderson, whose success with his own line and with Loewe makes him a critical cornerstone of the London schedule. He doesn’t wear that responsibility lightly. Nor was he afraid to plaster giant penises over billboards on his set or on graphic vinyl T-shirts — part of a tribute to the choreographer Michael Clark in an exploration of fandom — giving his show additional frisson.
And Simone Rocha made “hay.”
The whimsical romance and dark underbelly of Simone Rocha’s clothes make her one of the highlights of the London calendar. This season, inspired by the historic Irish tradition of Lughnasadh, a Gaelic harvest festival, she sent out models with delicate ribbon bows on their cheekbones or trailing from their fingertips. They wore skirt suits in crinkled gold cloqué or gleaming black leather and puffy tulle dresses and skirts that gained extra volume thanks to layers of loose raffia.
Ms. Rocha isn’t easy to categorize, nor does she want to be. Much like Molly Goddard, she of the supersize ruffle dresses who this season invited guests over to her East London studio to sample skirts in more modest shapes, Ms. Rocha designs for women (and men) like her. In other words, those who are quietly determined to do things their way.