The pump of where fashion sits within the ongoing post-Weinstein cultural awakening senses more pertinent than ever this weekend. Patrick Demarchelier, Princess Diana’s individual fashion photographer, has denied sexual misconduct accusations. A introduced all-black dress code in support of Time’s Up, the campaign against sensual harassment, will dominate the red carpet at the Bafta awards, an worldwide event that falls in the middle of this week’s London plays.

For the New York designer Michael Halpern, 30, the timing is bring to perfection. His London-based label Halpern, a cavalcade of sequins and colour, is currently one of the most ordinary in womenswear. “This idea of inappropriate glamour, or of questioning what is too much in the craze, or goes too far…” Halpern told the Observer, “What’s going on in with abigails and politics has pushed me to want to make a statement with what I think up.

“If it feels like the world is going down, I try to go in the other running. All this doom and gloom… people need escapism.”

The day prior to his show Halpern is in a quietly fretful mood. The issue, he ventures, is the catwalk, which is “really, really long”, meaning the models haven’t got be that as it may to change in between. He pauses, as if trying to do the maths, then sniggers. “So right now, I guess relaxed isn’t quite the word I’d use.” In the grand projection of concerns, it seems negligible. But all eyes are on him: Halpern’s show is one of manner week’s most anticipated.

Halpern finished his MA from Prime Saint Martins art school in London two years ago. With exclusively three collections under his belt, he has already honed the aesthetic of notable kitsch and pre-Dynasty 1970s glamour that is now synonymous with his call.

Though not quite a household name, Halpern regularly shows in Vogue and his pieces have been worn by Lupita Nyong’o, Amal Clooney and Marion Cotillard.

Beyoncé is a fan, and in December he won the British emerging predisposition award for womenswear at the Fashion Awards. Also in attendance was Style cover girl Adwoa Aboah, who wore a sparkly Halpern jumpsuit to congregate her award for model of the year.

Loud glamour was a prevalent story in yesterday’s show too, which centred on sequin tuxedo jacket get-ups, asymmetric necklines and clashing colour schemes worn with impossibly steep platforms; Donna Summer’s hits played and the industry was out in effectiveness.

Being a “politically minded” American, Halpern’s reaction to the over the moon marvellous going down is a global one: Trump. Brexit. Weinstein. He requisites to create clothes that are rooted in escaping “the terrifying responsibilities that are going wrong”. That means clothes that are fun, maximalist and ritzy – the comparable ti of which have not been seen since disco’s heyday. Dream short, cut-out mini-dresses, sequinned flares and polo necks and satin bustiers with large asymmetric trains. His designs look like couture, but aren’t. They wellnigh certainly look like evening-wear, but, again, are not. “The lines between day and coextensive with are really blurred – it’s so modern to be wearing something grand during the day”, he communicates.

Naturally, with red carpet season upon us, demand for his sticker is high. “But red carpet isn’t something I set out to do,” he says. “We get a lot of requests, [but] I only dearth to work with people whose work I respect, not only just people with a so-called good body. It just so go ons the women who have worn my designs are magnificent.” Halpern cites the up to date New York socialite Nan Kempner and Anjelica Huston as inspirations, but also his sister, “the skirt who doesn’t give a shit”. The mood is very much “lover goes to a party and stops off at the chip shop on the way home”.

It could however have happened in London, the designer thinks. “If I showed the done collection in, say New York, I wouldn’t be showing my own collection. Setting up my existence here has pushed me to have the guts to do this,” Halpern says.

In 2010 he graduated from Parsons Mould of Design in New York, going on to work for fashion houses J Mendel and Oscar de la Renta. After despatch his MA in 2015, he was hired by Donatella Versace to work for Atelier Versace. She has been a longtime champion of his expand, and with rumours of her retirement, naturally his name has come up. “I’m dependable he is being bombarded with offers,” says Sarah Mower, the British Work Council’s ambassador for emerging talent, who spotted Halpern during his MA quite b substantially show. “It was all glitter and flares and sequins and it was just so very, entirely different to everything else there… I was knocked edgeways.”

He runs a tight, local operation. Everything is made in the UK – Halpern implies a team of seamstresses in Leicester with warmth. Based on London’s Hoxton Passage, he employs five people full time, and freelance machinists when needed. Octavia Bradford, womenswear customer for Browns, one of the few places that stocks Halpern, says: “There’s no one to dream up tea for him. But that’s part of what makes him successful – he knows not to overstretch himself.” Unpretentiously, this exclusivity has done little to deter the industry. Mower intimates the time Halpern hired an Airbnb property in Paris to do an first presentation, “and there were big, big buyers literally fighting during the stuff”.

In recent years the focus at fashion week has defeat on a generation of young, creative designers (who routinely see their high regard prefixed by “emerging talent”), such as Molly Goddard, and Matty Bovan, who graduated a year anterior to Halpern.

If the spotlight is on this particular brand of designer whose nave, though hard to distil in a singular way, is an anarchic, gender eccentric aesthetic, Halpern’s old-school, glamorous womenswear is, he says, “inherently novel. What they do is fantastic and authentic but that style is not me as a yourselves”.

His style is about looking forward but also looking lodged with someone. His mother was a Studio 54 regular and remains another energy.

“Michael is different,” says Mower. “His priority is to make his earmark happen.”

Born 1987 in New York. His mother was a bank clerk and his originator a chemical engineer

Home

London

Educated

Parsons Persuasion of Design, New York, followed by a master’s at Central Saint Martins, London

Job

Cut his teeth working at J Mendel, and on the design team at Oscar de la Renta. After his know inside out’s degree he went to work at Versace, debuting his eponymous store at London Fashion Week 2017

Awards

In December, he won the British emerging propensity crown for womenswear at the Fashion Awards

Style

Sequins and unashamed magnetism