This is so ridiculously late there's almost no point. However as you probably know London Fashion Week happened a couple of weeks ago, and I was lucky enough to attend a few shows. So I'm going to paste a few bits and pieces for your enjoyment, and I'm going to start with a few impressions of my first day and hopefully I'll get some pictures of my lovely friend Julia who got me into most of the shows.
Thursday night got a bit messy, and we managed to miss the following on Friday, so gutted, foolish foolish girls- Paul Costelloe, Aminaka Wilmont, Caroline Charles, BodyAmr and bloody Bora Aksu and Charlie Le Mindu, two designers I lust over the most.
But onto Saturday-
www.irisvanherpen.com/irisvanherpen.html
We went to Iris Van Herpen first of all, which was in the Freemasons Hall courtesy of the wonderful minds behind Vauxhall Fashion Scout. This venue was showing the smaller designers, and at their best they lived up to into the old truism of London being about young, eccentric, experimental fashion. Iris Van Herpen was certainly no exception, front row was graced by the inestimable Pandemonium wearing this very outfit-
Sitting next to her was a girl-crush of mine Anna Trevelyan, who works for Dazed and Confused and is assistant to uber-stylist Nicola Formechetti, as well as some other Dazed folk. We ended up sitting at the next table along from them in Itsu after the show, it was an effort not to stare in awe, Anna was wearing a studded headband, maybe the Givenchy, or maybe just a take on it.
SO, the actual show, the make up was subtle but fantastic, the models had bleached out, pasty skin with a strange sheen to it. They looked ill or over cooked or something, I liked it.
The designer used thin, flat tapes of black and bronze to play with body form. It looked like stiff versions of the stuff you pulled out of tapes as a kid, or part of circuit. While the distortion of the body through cage-like structures has been around for a while, even reaching the high street in the form of Topshop's cage skirts, I think Van Herpen managed to avoid seeming imitative. There was a subtle referencing of Alexander McQueen S/S 09, both collections turned the models into half alien/half insectoid creatures. Her designs reminded me of moths and those terribly delicate little creatures that only live in the dark. My favourite look was the black dress that appears in the first pic on her website (pics to come soon I promise), as the model walked the front panels moved like wings.
Next show was Belle Sauvage, which was in Victoria House, the venue for On/Off- Blow PR's venture. Wasn't such a massive fan- the shoes were awesome, loved the exhibition and the venue, the crowd was the best dressed and the hottest I saw all week BUT I'm so bored of this digital printing thing. The construction was nice but despite the complexity of the designs it all looked a bit bottom floor of Topshop Oxford Circus, you know where they keep all the concession stands, and the colours didn't work in my (appraising) eyes.
We also got diverted into a shop and managed to miss a couple of shows, but I bought a vintage John Galliano playsuit that makes me joyous everytime I put it on, so worth it really.
My accounts of Sunday will soon follow, along with the crappy videos I made on my phone (lesson learned, always charge your camera).
So, end of the first blog, hope it was as good for you as it was for me, tell me what you think, but they say the first time is always painful so be gentle.
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