THE tradition of designers breaking away from London to flex their muscles (particularly the ones that operate the ego) to “build their labels” is relatively new. The generation that sprang up when London Fashion Week was in its infancy is still here, or at least Betty Jackson, Nicole Farhi and Paul Smith are, and all have successful businesses.
Of the three, Jackson’s turnover is by some way the smallest — £3 million per year compared with Smith’s £200 million — but this is probably more to do with her personality than her talent.
I once asked her how she thought she was perceived abroad and she replied that she thought she probably wasn’t perceived at all. However, Jackson’s show yesterday proved that after 24 years in an industry that is vampiric in its hunger for the new, she can still acquit herself very nicely.
All the emerging autumn-winter leads seen elsewhere in London and New York were here: the Empire line and drop-waisted dresses, knee-length trousers, Prince of Wales checks and the bigger, more voluminous silhouette.
But they were given an inimitable Jacksonesque spit and polish that helped the audience to understand how real women might be tempted to wear some of these trends.
The dresses, herringbone pinafores or finely crocheted baby dolls, had an easy schoolgirl insouciance about them and managed to avoid looking infantile. (Are we about to experience another baby boom, by the way? Next winter’s collections are bursting with dresses that could do sterling work as maternity wear.) And what is this fixation with demure children’s clothes (it’s not as if children dress like that any more)?
Skirts were full but managed to avoid the art-school-work-in-progress look of so many other full skirts seen this week. Sometimes they were boxpleated and knitted (which looks much better than it sounds). Other times they were velvet, gathered with wide bands of silver embroidery at the hems and worn with brightly coloured tights and square-toed, low-heeled metallic slingbacks, wedge sandals or studded cowboy boots.
Jackson has always had a penchant for knitwear, but this collection was awash with it: sequined bobble hats, cocked at a jaunty angle; long woolly scarves tossed round woven coats with big, single appliqu? flowers; and short-sleeved jumpers layered over chiffon shirts (another popular theme).
Scattered among the muted brown and grey checks was plenty of colour, but unlike the electric outbursts of tangerine and cornflower seen elsewhere, Jackson’s palette was as gentle — lemons, teals — as her move towards a more capacious cut.
If Jackson makes fashion easy, Jessica Ogden prefers the Mensa approach. That’s to say that although there were some pretty ideas in her collection — I counted two beautiful embroidered smock dresses towards the end of her show — they just about got suffocated beneath clothes that were almost insurmountably difficult, or tricksy, to wear. One hates to be prescriptive, but it’s hard to see who would benefit from layering a wide dirndl skirt or a pair of woollen Bermudas over tracksuit bottoms.
Designers everywhere are grappling with the need to move away from the skinny, fitted shapes of the past ten years. It’s fair to say that most collections haven’t quite got it right yet. Swash’s long boxy jackets over drainpipes looked a bit butch, to say the least.
Gardem’s slender washed-leather zippered jackets worn with leggings or big, ruffled skirts was beautifully done, but was reminiscent of Alexander McQueen’s pirates collection of a few seasons ago.
It was Ebru Ercon, the Turkish-born British-based designer, who played with the space around the body more originally than anyone else so far this week, layering triangular-cut tweeds over rectangular wool jumpers to come up with a look that, when it worked, was arrestingly elegant.