Mark Fast’s choice of including three plus size models in his catwalk show must have been deliberately made to prove his skin-tight super short and gravity defying dresses characterised by string vest-like knitting aren’t just for a limited and understandably slim audience.
With his Spring/Summer 2010 collection Fast showed that his work is not so much about having that perfect body, but the perfect attitude.
The main aim of Fast’s knitwear is indeed not cocooning the body in luxury fibres, but cling to it in a revealing and sensual way.
Inspired by Erin Brockovich and silent movies from the 20s, Fast came up with a collection comprising short and long dresses with cobweb-like motifs that left the skin bare in strategic places.
There was sophistication in the dresses incorporating feathers and leather fans that added some much needed volume to the knitted pieces and also had maximum visual impact.
Most of the designs were rather complex and a long dress called to mind in the frontal motifs Sophonisba's exotic attire in Pastrone's Cabiria.
Mary Katrantzou focused in her previous collection on perfume bottles. This time though it looked like the actual materials the bottles are made of – glass – proved incredibly inspirational.
The young designer of Greek origins pushed her prints to the limit, creating one of the most colourful collections for the next Spring/Summer season.
Maybe Katrantzou spent some time in a Murano glass factory watching the craftsmen blowing in their pipes, creating colourfully unique pieces.
Digitalised abstract prints in bright shades of blue, orange and yellow swirled, twisted and mixed on the dresses. Some designs – perfect to drive a spaceship, rather than just going out – even seemed to have frills and wings that jutted out as if they were pieces of glass being moulded, and were matched with oversized jewels by British glass artist Peter Layton.
The collection represented a step forward and looked more elegant than usual. Katrantzou showed she is progressing towards the right direction, but she will have to remember a woman’s wardrobe is not only made of nice dresses featuring bright prints and Swarovski crystals, but also of quite practical and possibly perfectly tailored trouser suits and in this department the designer will have to strengthen herself.
White prevailed in the first designs that went down the catwalk at John Rocha, almost to remind people in the audience which were his main inspirations – lace-making town Carrickmacross and Irish-American abstract painter, Sean Scully.
Irish inspirations appeared in the earthy and almost autumnal palette comprising black, cinnamon and brown, but rather than to ivy, the leaf headdresses and designs made you think about fragrant Autumnal leaves.
Rocha’s best designs were the showpieces, those stiff or bell-shaped crocheted black or white dresses dipped in a mixture of water and sugar to stiffen the fabric.
The most interesting interpretations of the lace inspiration – and probably also the best selling designs come next Spring – were the jackets with lace side-panels.
There are quite a few designers who have the sad tendency to describe their work with precise definitions that the fashion media, often too lazy to find interesting interpretations themselves, end up reusing ad nauseam.
This is the case with Kinder Aggugini.
This man has cleverly built his reputation on three things, tailoring, punk and having shared a flat once with Leigh Bowery and Trojan.
Last season this supposedly unrepentant anarchist came up with the sort of designs you see every season on the Italian runways, especially in the sort of romantic and flowery collections à la Mariella Burani.
Realising that maybe that wasn’t punk enough, for this season Aggugini tried a bit harder to find a balance between Sid Vicious and Chanel. Yet it didn’t really work.
His models with ringlet-ed hair and wearing doll dresses with full deconstructed skirts in which inserts of black or polka-dot fabrics were added looked not like evil versions of Alice in Wonderland, but like grown up women playing at being silly.
Dresses and jackets in technicolour python-prints, zebra motifs, tiger stripes (the sort of designs that when used by Roberto Cavalli are understandably described as unbearably kitsch) and flowery mixes looked even less desirable matched with cumbersome mad hatter hats by Stephen Jones.
The whole presentation ended up distracting from the tailored tweed or houndstooth jackets that were simply suffocated by the ridiculous amount of inspirations Aggugini crammed in the collection.
Rather than punk, it looked like opening the Kinder eggs Aggugini takes his name from and finding a brightly colourful yet useless surprise inside.
Laser cut evening dresses proved there were some interesting possibilities there, but, confused about his identity (Aggugini must have wondered while working on it, "Am I a tailor or should I just be a punk with an unhealthy love for colourful fabrics?") the designer came up with a collection that really lacked any kind of cohesion.
Aggugini can certainly not be filed under the intellectual designer label, but the same can be said about edgy Danielle Scutt.
Yes, she may know what her young fans want and her body conscious over the knee dresses weren’t actually too bad, but too often she has the undesirable habit of falling prey of trashy inspiration.
There were quite a few of such moments at her catwalk show especially when models walked down the runway with frilly maid’s apron dresses or see-through dresses with polka-dot edges that called to mind old kitsch postcards of Spanish ladies with 3D costumes in colourful fabrics.
There was also a hint to the 80s in Scutt’s designs, but also in Louise Gray’s.
The latter focused on street culture for a youthful audience. Graffiti were sprayed on jackets and bright colours were used for dresses and jumpsuits, yet it was a very thin collection, the sort of stuff that can only be appreciated and find a market in London.
Charles Anastase's collection made me question his tailoring skills quite a bit: while his trench coats and cropped jackets were passable, there were voluminous dresses looking like crossovers between sacks, tents, quilts and sails or looking like random pale and bright orange rags piled up in tiered form and supported by layers or tulle.
I do often get the impression that London Fashion Week is great for people with a wonderful imagination and almost zero tailoring skills and rather vapid shows such as PPQ’s in which there are usually more celebrities in the front row than well cut clothes on the runways, prove such statement is actually right.
Yet Osman Yousefzada can’t certainly be filed among the designers lacking tailoring skills.
With his Spring/Summer collection Osman showed his approach is much more similar to that of an architect than to a designer's.
The designer filtered traditional pieces such as the kimono or simple polo shirts trough minimal and architectural inspirations, painting everything in white and adding little gold details around the neckline or on the front panels where motifs evoking Jacob Bengel’s Art Deco jewellery were added.
Nautical inspirations appeared in a short dress with a strip of fabric running down one side rope-style, while architecture came back in the wooden sandals with thick golden straps around the ankles.
Everything was clinically pure and precise, and there were moments when you wished there would have been more colours popping up here and there.
Yet there is nothing more timeless than a neutral tone and it’s easy to guess that Osman was looking for timelessness rather than trendy-ness while working on this collection.
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