Those Christopher Kane's fans who impatiently waited for their idol to replicate the bold clashes of colour of his recent S/S 09 collection were probably disappointed to see the young designer opting for a more sensible palette.
Yet designers must be able to prove they're versatile and can quickly switch from one style to another avoiding in this way to repeat themselves. 
Besides, they must also be able to capture the attention of new potential customers and, so far, Kane has showed he certainly knows how to do it.
Kane’s collection opened with a few simple cashmere cardigans and checked suits. Then, little by little, his vision became sharper and clearer with ethereal organza black, 
ivory and cream dresses crisscrossed by bold black graphic lines or velvety stripes in iridescent nuances that called to mind the colour and consistency of insect wings.
Creating geometric patterns with the vertical or horizontal lines, Kane gave a futuristic imprint to his straight dresses or his frothy skirts, that also seemed to have a strong tactile quality.
Some of Kane's creations seemed to explore the possibilities of the "lingerie look", but it was Richard Nicoll that experimented this look in depth. Taking inspiration from suspenders, corsets and the montages of visual artist Linder Sterling, Nicoll presented a collection that borrowed a lot from the boudoir.
Suspender-belts decorated trench coats, skirts, tops and even the masks worn by the models while corsets were turned into laced-up mini-skirts. Transparent PVC and metallics were alternated with luxurious fabrics such as cashmere in shades that went from ivory to nude.
There were the occasional cases where you wishes Nicoll would have opted for fewer pink bows, especially on trouser suits and skin-tight dresses, but Linder's artwork, printed on long and fluid gowns, provided a much-needed break from these sugary excesses.
“Coffee, Tea or Eley Kishimoto?” might be wondering the fans of the design duo, paraphrasing the 1960s book Coffee, Tea, or Me? that contained the “uninhibited memoirs” of two airline stewardesses.
There were quite a few parts of that volume in which stewardess uniforms were mentioned. It was indeed during the 60s that the look of stewardesses was radically transformed: rigidly military styles were left behind and famous designers were enlisted by airlines to create colourful and futuristic suits.
Pierre Cardin and Emilio Pucci were among the designers called to give a new look to stewardesses, and, in their A/W 09 collection Eley Kishimoto mixed these inspirations with Courrèges’s clean lines and passion for the future.
Prints in red and blue were used for neat and uniform-like skirt suits and there were plenty of elegant cardigans and apron like dresses in navy, often accessorised with scarves and striking hats decorated with a simple logo spelling “EK”.
For the night Eley Kishimoto’s stewardesses transformed into slightly more aggressive visions thanks to vivid tiger prints and eye-popping orange and yellow dresses with matching tights à la Pucci, which were definitely less space-age and more Optical Art orgasm.
Aggressive women in search of updated power-dressing looks shouldn't go further than Danielle Scutt. Scutt's ideal woman couldn't be more different from those stereotypical visions of ethereal women and muses that sometimes inspire fashion designers.
For her A/W 09 collection, the designer was inspired by a strange mix of Thierry Mugler's dominatrix and kamikaze bombers. Sharp black skirt suits with flaming red lapels called to mind the former; PVC motifs decorating the lapels and wrists of black jackets and the hems of the skirts and vaguely recalling ammunition, and bomb-shaped pompoms dangling from zips, echoed the latter.
There was more variety and less terrorism in Scutt's animal printed catsuits and fluid dresses and, maybe, it wouldn't have hurt the collection if Scutt had concentrated more on these looks.
As a whole, though, Scutt produced another powerful collection, with some strong references to 80s power-dressing and entirely dedicated to all those women out there who are in charge of their lives.
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