London Fashion Week AW18

Once in a while, a special kind of fashion week comes along. It’s when there’s something in the air; a unique sense of unpredictability. You wake up every morning with zero idea of what the day has in store. The autumn/winter 2018 shows in London were one of those fashion weeks. Who would have thought that by Tuesday evening we’d have seen Her Majesty The Queen front row at a gimp-masked Richard Quinn show? Or that we’d watch as Erdem’s ball gowns dragged through the narrow corridors of the National Portrait Gallery, only to have dinner in those majestic surroundings that same night? I saw a pair of stilettos made out of Donald Trump rubber masks in the Central Saint Martins show, and a girl wearing an inflatable swimming pool. And Mary Katrantzou’s runway was stormed by a fur protester clad in an elongated snood. Was it a full moon? Nah, just London doing its thing.

On the list of expectations was Christopher Bailey’s farewell show at Burberry. After 17 years at the helm, one of fashion’s most genuine and personable designers took his final bow (for now) in a massive production featuring a few surprises of its own: an art installation with swaying lights, a time-travelling, quite bonkers collection that most emotionally referenced his own teenage years in 1980s’ Halifax, American royalty Chelsea Clinton front row, and a cast including Prince Nikolai of Denmark and Cara Delevingne, both introduced to fashion by Burberry. “There’s a timing for these things and I feel like you’ve got to be sensitive to them. When people are most not expecting it, it’s the moment to play with it,” Bailey said, reflecting on the many stages he’s lived through at Burberry. “I’ve always tried to experiment a little bit and try new things.”

Half way through the ready-to-wear shows, we’ve already seen our share of references to the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements. No one, however, could have seen Christopher Kane’s bold statement coming. “I’m not getting into the whole moment we’re in, but the fact is, yeah, it’s human behaviour and to me it’s fascinating,” Kane said of his sex-centric show, which unapologetically played on all the tangents of eroticism, from the suggestive to the full-blown. “It’s a creative process and I’m not going to stop being myself or feeling the way I feel,” Kane asserted, echoing a statement you hear a lot - anywhere but on the record. “It’s not to in any way disrespect anything that’s happening, but every season there’s always an element of sexual and human behaviour, and that’s just reality.” In fashion there’s nothing better and more surprising than bravery, especially when it’s founded in a no-nonsense approach like Kane’s.

I’m not sure I expected to find myself in a tuxedo on Sunday night, or when I found time to put it on, but there I was at Edward Enninful’s glamorous BAFTA party at the new Annabel’s where Naomi Campbell, Steve McQueen, Princess Beatrice, Raf Simons, Kate Moss, Matty Bovan and Leonardo DiCaprio may all have been in the same room at the same time.

After a weekend of fun young designer shows - Bovan, Molly Goddard, Fashion East - there was something new and exciting about the sense of glamour that’s hitting this city hand-in-hand with this new wave of talent, represented in the #NewVogue and beyond. We’re all one in this city, yet the contrast between that party and Edwin Mohney’s graduate collection, which closed the Central Saint Martins MA show, couldn’t have been greater. His fetishised orchestration of blow-up water-sports equipment, foam things, and human dummies (or condoms?) bordered on infantilism, nailing the subversive nature of emerging London fashion. (Those presidential stilettos, the Trumpettos, were Mohney’s too.)

Michael Halpern - brand name simply Halpern - reflected the current tension between grit and glamour in a collection he called “inappropriate glamour”. Tackling his image as a formalwear designer head on, Halpern covered daywear in colourful sequins and couture-like draping. “Why can’t you wear a sequinned jacket during the day? I don’t mind being called an eveningwear brand, because most people wear it like that, but it’s nice to challenge it,” he said. Sequins at Halpern weren’t unexpected but seeing them cycling down the street on a Tuesday morning definitely will be. That’s the great thing about London Fashion Week: some of these ideas might seem unfathomable now, but in a few years’ time we’ll all be calling Halpern a change-maker. That’s why our 91-year-old Queen of England, who has never been seen on the front row of a fashion show in her life, decided it was time to join in this season.

“From the tweed of the Hebrides to Nottingham Lace and of course Carnaby Street, our fashion industry has been renowned for outstanding craftsmanship for many years, and continues to produce world-class textiles and cutting-edge, practical designs,” Her Majesty said in the speech she gave on Tuesday evening at Richard Quinn’s show. She presented the emerging designer with her first award for new and young fashion talent, noting how Quinn - who makes his expert print equipment available to students and peer designers - exemplifies the fellowship and team spirit that makes London fashion thrive. The Queen called the award “a tribute to the industry and my legacy to all those, who have contributed to British fashion.” Sworn to secrecy an hour before the show, I was fortunate to join the monarch and the British Fashion Council’s Ambassador for Emerging Talent Sarah Mower backstage as she introduced Her Majesty to some of London’s brightest young design talents, who were only told about the meeting when I was.

It was an emotional but above all epic experience, perhaps illustrated best in the contrast between the Queen in her neat, sparkly powder blue skirt suit and Charles Jeffrey in his New Rock platform boots and Mozart makeup. Call me biased, but it’s this dynamic diversity that makes London the world’s best breeding ground for ideas.