Daniel Fletcher’s collection is an early bird arrival ahead of London Fashion Week. In fact this is his spring collection, which is ready to buy now. What’s to see here is less conceptual thematics than consolidation of his branding. By now, it’s easy to recognize Daniel Fletcher signatures: the bias-binding edgings on jackets and pockets, short shorts, checkerboard patchwork shirts and trousers, and the split-hem bootcuts that he was one of the first to make a thing of back in fall 2018.
The light-touch inspiration running through it was, he said, poring over his grandmother’s photo albums. Snaps of young relations in naval uniform or demob civvies just after WWII reminded him of the energy and optimism of the first teenagers of the 1950s, when all Brit lads looked to American movies and music for their styles. So somewhere in here, there’s a varsity jacket with a sailor collar, a forage cap, and preppy-meets-mod taste for cotton checks and brushed mohair plaid.
Good to know, too, that a healthy part of Fletcher’s easily recognizable look is down to his waste-saving practices; see his patchwork technique, which uses fabric from former seasons. Having his own e-commerce—which heated up during the pandemic—also gave him the idea of offering customers a choice in co-designing pieces on pre-order. Such is the cotton cable knit sweater, which is actually a collage of fragments of former knits.
When the slivers of cut-offs become too small to be redeployed as garments, Fletcher has started to have them made into terrific quilts—each one different—as an offshoot of his business that’s been going down well in the WFH era. Meanwhile, he’s revving up for London’s imminent Fashion Week, making his return to a physical showing for the first time since 2019. Now that Prime Minister Boris Johnson has thrown off mask mandates and eased international travel restrictions (albeit for reasons many suspect are politically expedient), there is rising hope that the British band of young runway-showers like Daniel Fletcher will be gathering a more solid audience, come mid-February.
