Why Are We in London?

Catch up: English fashion editor Pandora Sykes answers the FAQS of LFW

Monday is a big day in London. It is arguably the reason the city is so proud of its own fashion week. By the time you read this, Erdem, Burberry, Christopher Kane and possibly Peter Pilotto will have shown their conception of what Spring 2016 looks like and with the help of tomorrow’s forerunners — Marques’Almeida, Toga, etc — the young designers who have commanded a conversation about the new way clothes are supposed to look will have closed out the season.

Here’s the overarching sentiment about London: No matter how good or conversely bad the clothes are, the editors who review these shows, who must take note of specific looks and then later incorporate them into stories and style pages, love it. It’s “much more relaxed” than New York. Not quite as serious as Milan and it certainly does not hold the gravitas that Paris — the sort of end-all-be-all regent exam of fashion month — does.

But what about the clothes?

I know I’ve been stuck on this notion of ideas in clothing since last week when I held Michael Kors up against Sigmund Freud and asked what’s so bad about a lasting one, but really, that’s all fashion week is:

A string of ideas.

If we (as in, you and me) use the clothes as a literary device — the language to connect with each other, it is the designers who make the clothes that hold all the power. They create the connecting tools that we use to survive. Whether you see it, whether you want to see it, they’re making cultural, timely points about human behavior.

Unless they’re not.

In which case, they’re just clothes. Which, as far as I’m concerned, is like Joan Didion trying to complete a report without a pen: not bad, but certainly not as good as it could be.

So let’s go with ideas!

On Saturday, J.W. Anderson put together a collection bursting with a very particular sense of style that at first glance seems to have harkened back to the 80s power woman of last September: big shoulders (also seen on display at Simone Rocha underneath rubber cross-body suspenders — the sort of aesthetically-pleasing, sort of sinister detail that countered her quite-feminine dresses), bright splotches of color and a pervasive Keith Haring-esque black and white print. Broken apart, the otherwise wacky Anderson collection (double-a-cup bras as tops! And full tulle sweatsuits!) proved unflinchingly wearable. That’s impressive.

By yesterday, we’d seen Jonathan Saunders, with his delightfully printed tropical kimonos and A+ styling, Topshop Unique — a celebration of the working woman as far as I could see beyond the red lip and plastic earrings — and Mary Katrantzou, unofficially the mini dress whisperer and no doubt a technical master of the sewn hem, who has proven her dexterity in all forms of prints, not just those that are large and graphic. The styling was good, the energy was great and the clothes? Definitely more than just clothes.

Photographs via Vogue Runway

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