Cara Delevingne and Jourdan Dunn cosied up to Sam Smith; Kate Moss cackled at Mario Testino’s jokes; Clare Maguire’s powerful voice soared above a gospel choir; and, at 1pm sharp, the world tuned in to watch Burberry Prorsum’s London Fashion Week show.
The lunchtime slot is chosen specifically to catch the widest possible audience across international time zones. Burberry, a global brand with revenues of more than £2bn, has to consider these things, and its show waits for no one. The perennially late Naomi Campbell had to sneak sheepishly to her front-row seat, 10 minutes after kick-off.
London designers function as the icing on the global fashion cake
Burberry’s patchwork designs included luxe versions of mirror-embroidered hippie dresses, vividly printed trench coats made using a traditional Durham quilting technique, and haute fringed ponchos that would be perfect for the kind of girl who arrives at Glastonbury by helicopter. Much of this bohemian rhapsody was hand-finished, because Christopher Bailey, the brand’s chief creative and executive officer, wanted to present clothes that counteracted the fast pace of the modern, connected world. As the music swelled, Kate, Naomi and Mario, hands raised to heaven while singing along to the “Hallelujah” refrain from My Sweet Lord, appeared to approve.
This show was a reminder that nothing beats a beautiful product, something that London designers understand better than many others. Unlike Burberry, which sits comfortably in the top 10 of global fashion brands with its lucrative beauty, accessories and fragrance arms, most British designers don’t have bag and shoe lines. “They only sell fashion,” says Natalie Massenet, the Net-a-Porter founder and chairwoman of the British Fashion Council. This gives London a distinct place in the global fashion pecking order — No 2 behind Paris — but it is the world capital of exciting clothes. The night before the Burberry show, Massenet hosted a dinner at Downing Street for the bigwigs from the international fashion stores, who, she says, come to London to find interesting clothes to liven up their shop floors.
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London designers, marked by their creativity and quirkiness, function as the icing on the global fashion cake. We produce the eye-catching clothes that whet the appetite and get the shopping juices flowing.
And what clothes. LFW saw Christopher Kane, one of the few British designers with a bag and shoe line (and a John Pawson-designed flagship store on Mount Street to sell them in), exploring desire, with designs in Swiss lace derived from the life drawings of entangled nudes that he and his studio make to relax. Erdem fused a mannish camel coat with dazzling jacquard. Jonathan Saunders created look-at-me separates in eye-popping patterns and textures. Mary Katrantzou elevated the duffel coat to a wearable piece of art with her lavish embellishments. And JW Anderson paid homage to 1980s synth pop, with swagged leather coats, jumbo cord skinnies and fringed crystal skirts, which will be catnip to cool girls everywhere. Paris is the capital of luxury fashion, Milan has its handbags and high heels, but in London the clothes are king.