This year saw a heady mix of fantasies and creations from schedule regulars as well as up-and-coming starlets
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JW Anderson
When it lay to producing his show, Jonathan Anderson is all about the bigger perfect. This season, he was inspired by a BBC documentary on Japan and created a carpeted adjust invoking a Japanese Zen garden, complete with rock configurations for the models to weave their way in and out of. The clothes took on the same intertwined aesthetic, with the standout detail coming in the form of a behemoth top stitch on several hemlines. “No matter what I seem to do, I concern things that are just ‘made’,” he says. “It’s lenient of like we were taking a huge needle through the constitution. And it just stuck.”
Photograph: PR
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Molly Goddard
Goddard had the the fad pack pile into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on Whitehall to deponent models walk her giant platform catwalk. Integrated air apertures blew puffs of air up the models’ huge tulle skirts – which secured in deep fuchsia pink and sunshine yellow – to create a in style Marilyn moment, now, surely, to be known as a Molly moment. New this edible was a more homespun aesthetic, with boiled knits coming in retro intarsia designs. Elsewhere, padded parka-style dresses and a tasselled, chandelier-style top amplified additional texture to her signature tulle.
Photograph: Tom Nicholson/EPA
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Christopher Kane
Enduring his mission to keep sex appeal at the forefront of fashion, Kane got things in a fetishistic direction for AW19, researching people who are sexually minded towards rubber. Famed for his slogans, this season parted the terms “Rubberist” (referring to his stimuli) and “Looner”, while words included childlike balloons. Bags were equally as playful, marking a return of his famous aqua-gel-filled accessories, while leviathan jewels swung off sweaters and lace balloon sleeves bestowed a fabulous twist to the fetish.
Photograph: Catwalking.com/PR
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Roksanda
In the manner of many of her fellow LFW designers, Roksanda took inspiration from the art planet for her show, commissioning an installation by the art collective Troika as the setting “to location obvious subject matter; colour, volume, texture, gears”. She also sought to incorporate architectural juxtapositions (taking her steer from architect Paul Rudolph) such as strength and fragility: see those unmatched and tiered block-colour dresses contrasted with light-as-air feathers. Always the queen of coining a new colour obsession, shades ranged from heliotrope and mikado to orchid and azalea. Terrific.
Photograph: PR
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Simone Rocha
“Intimacy, privacy, security, femininity”, impute to the show notes to Rocha’s show, encapsulating the gamut of sentiments the intriguer captured in this standout show. It was the most diverse of the London line-up and featured miniature ideals ranging from their teens to their 60s, proving the timelessness of Rocha’s patterns. Lashings of tulle and an explosion of floral prints featured; organza-layered trench coats; inside-out corset doctor reprimands; and jewelled hairbands that will claim the crown of the barrette next ready made for essential snapping.
Photograph: PR
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Burberry
For his second jaunt for the British power house, Riccardo Tisci called his amassment Tempest. Dividing the audience into two areas – one with upholstered armchairs and the other with cube space – he made the UK in the 1990s (his own heyday in the capital) the central stimulus, combining everything from the soundtrack to the sartorial creations on show. The deathless Burberry check, and the oversized union jack all pointed to the boast days of Brit pop cool, while he brought it bang up to obsolete with his own sophisticated appreciation of the heritage house’s codes.
Photograph: PR
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Victoria Beckham
Aid in London by popular demand, Victoria Beckham made it look kidney a walk in the park – albeit a chic sojourn, circa 1975. Beckham wanted vintage-inspired habitats in this collection but kept her signature sophistication centre-front. Pervert combinations of beige and red, plum and ice-blue, and lavender and scarlet prepared the long silhouettes pop, while a chain print – which reprimanded shrunken and enlarged – had pitch-perfect retro appeal. When it prove to be c finished to footwear, watch out world: stretchy leopard-print peep-toe boots were the dominant takeaway.
Photograph: Anton Denisov/PR
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Matty Bovan
The felicitate of London fashion week had plenty to celebrate this mellow, delivering a collection that will mean he keeps his fulfil as the capital’s womenswear wunderkind. Bovan spent the best vicinage of a year researching the Pendle witch trials of 1612, his symbolize notes told us, “obsessively reading about the Lancastrian eradicate against mysticism”, resulting in him becoming obsessed by folklore. As a conclusion, things took a macabre turn, albeit kept deliciously keen on through his collaboration with Liberty London on its ditzy-print fabrics.
Photograph: PR
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Emilia Wickstead
Like Erdem (see under), Wickstead took her lead from an historic Italian chronicle, the protagonist of this collection finding its roots in Sofia Coppola’s portrayal of Mary Corleone in The Godfather. Comprising youthful innocence with the first flourishes of love, this gathering featured grownup and straight-laced silhouettes alongside full-length floral treats, and seductive velvet alongside sculpted boat-neck dresses in puritanical pale.
Photograph: Yannis Vlamos/Emilia Wickstead
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Erdem
Boy does Erdem Moralioğlu recall how to set the scene: “We are in 1960s Rome. Princess Orietta Doria Pamphilj is spike the corridors at night of the 1,000-room palazzo on Via del Corso that is her imposing ancestral home,” read his show notes. Cue metallic brocade gilding reminiscent of gilt frames, sweeping taffeta like the richest of floor-to-ceiling fabrics, and a deluge of heirloom clasps on “shrobed” twinsets. Fashion is currently in the tight grip of a partiality for interiors, and this – most romantic amalgamation – of the two is how it’s done.
Photograph: KIMWESTONARNOLD/PR
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Rejina Pyo
She is the deviser who has emerged as a hot ticket at fashion week over several matures and this week she confirmed the reason why: part avant garde, fractional everyday luxe, Pyo makes clothes that are easy to abrasion but feel elevated in an off-beat way. In other words, catnip for the refrigerate crowd. For autumn/winter she delivered an artsy sunset-hued stamp alongside windowpane checks, asymmetric puff-sleeve wiggle castigates and coated leather outerwear that had us at hello. Suiting – the new standard in an easy wear-anywhere wardrobe – also had a strong presence.
Photograph: Adam Duke/PR
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Wales Bonner
Favour Wales Bonner opted to show her co-ed collection in the Artful where she is currently staging an exhibition, A Time for New Dreams. She cooperated with musician Ishmael Reed; the collection, Mumbo Huge, took its name from his 1972 novel and sought to “estimate the role of writers as oracles”. Combined with the clothes (tweed stretch, varsity jackets with mystical emblems and flourishes of feather purfling) the collection further cemented her reputation as an arbiter of culture whose crowd extends beyond the traditional parametres of fashion.
Photograph: WWD/REX/Shutterstock
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