London Fashion Week is proving less ground breaking than usual with quite a few young designers channelling what could be called the Prada-meets-Marni aesthetic, that is more or less wearable clothes for grown ups (think about Topshop's roomy coats and sensible skirts or about Mary Katrantzou borrowing the orientalist shapes of Prada's S/S 13 collection and then making a complete mess) rather than extreme looks for younger types (if you don't take into account KTZ's collection).
Though this may be the final confirmation that London has been ambitiously rising to the position of fully established fashion capital, it is also the natural consequence of a few young designers growing up and reaching a more mature age (even though in a creative industry such as fashion, reaching maturity often means becoming repetitive, boring or having reached fashion fatigue...).
To be honest quite a few designers displayed an incoherent will to include too many inspirations in their collections, coming up with a barrage of assorted clothes rather than with a neatly edited selection of new designs.
That said, there were punk echoes in the prevalently red and black collection by Holly Fulton.
Everything started from a simple optical M.C. Escher-esque illusion comprising the kind of cubes that you design from a hexagonal grid and that you can see in two different ways going outward or going inward.
The motif was replicated on dresses, skirts and jackets and was at times modulated by soft round Art Deco-like arches or covered in Yayoi Kusama-like dots.
Rows of lipsticks added a Tom Wesselman note to the collection and were used in geometrical formations for prints on trouser suits or in a sort of architectural way to build skyscraper-like structures that followed the contours of the body on the dresses.
Suspended between punk and romanticism, Fulton came up with a bright red skirt suit covered in patches with prints of hairgrips, scissors, tigers, snakes and bears in a graphic style reminiscent of Fornasetti or of geometrical figures such as polyedra.
It was somehow a shame though that Fulton seemed to be not so focused on the main theme of the collection.
Inspired by different ideas and moods - fanzines, groupies (the patches represented indeed a groupie's collection of bits and pieces), Victoriana and mad and obsessive love (Béatrice Dalle - a quite popular muse for fashion designers, borrowed also by Sophie Theallet in her Autumn/Winter 2011 collection - in Betty Blue, is one of the inspirations for this collection) Fulton seemed to be divided between optical punk and the aggressive/obsessive yet romantic motif.
Not being able to decide, she alternated optical moments to looks for strong women and for the hopelessly romantic, coming up with quite desirable geometrical skirts, dresses with white lilies and sparrows matched with black leather biker jackets embroidered with white lilies and electric blue feathers and long evening gowns decorated with prints of elaborately ornate hearts (View this photo).
Maybe fewer sparrows and more uniform polyhedra (View this photo)/optical cubes mixed with the punk theme would have been the key to a more coherent and exciting collection.
Yet so far, despite the reports proclaming London as a hotbed of geniuses, there has been very little to be excited about (no, lifting entire paintings by Gustav Klimt and replicating them on a dress as L'Wren Scott did is definitely not new, nor it should be encouraged...). With this collection Fulton may have hit all the same a few notes in terms of desirability and saleability, even though some ideas behind her designs may not be that new (Pierre Hardy's S/S 13 collection features shoes and small accessories in the same optical cube print employed in some of Fulton's designs).
The problem with London remains, though: quite a few designers are in desperate need of tailoring lessons, but fashion critics also need to be a bit tougher and honest in their reviews.
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