Fashion may be frivolous, but decade after decade it has been used by politicians to hint at their power or at their agenda, while designers often employed the runway to raise awareness about specific issues, including gender and environmental problems.
Yet, surprisingly, London Fashion Week Men's, the fashion event dedicated to menswear fashion that kicked off last Saturday, started and ended with more or less no explicit references to Brexit, and with the enthusiasm of a child reluctantly going back to school after the Christmas holidays.
Maybe the reason behind the atmosphere of uncertainty at the fashion week was the fact that the official date for the UK to leave the European Union – 29th March – is relentlessly approaching, and there are still a lot of questions that remain unanswered.
Parliament hasn't approved yet an exit deal (the Commons vote on May's deal was postponed from December 2018 to January 2019) and there is no legislation to ensure a smooth departure. As people became more informed about Europe and the benefits they may lose by leaving it (especially when it comes to measures for Northern Ireland; Europeans who have settled in the UK and British people living as expats in the EU; or travelling and international trading), the outcome of the 2016 referendum seems to have shifted towards a different position.
Pressure is mounting on Theresa May to deliver Brexit, but the choice between her Brexit, no deal or no Brexit seems impossible to make at the moment and ministers are still divided. A political crisis looms for what regards the next few days - will there be a mass cabinet walkout, a referendum, or a general election? We'll see.
At London Men's in the meantime quite a few designers seemed more or less in denial: things went on as usual, but on a schedule that is offering less originality to buyers and just a few designers worth following.
Critics are continuing to see in Charles Jeffrey Loverboy a saviour: a likely heir to Vivienne Westwood, but lacking the dark and tortured soul and the vision of Alexander McQueen, the designer hid under his tartan suits, faux fur jackets and signature knits, modelled in a sort of queer cabaret, a political message of some sort. Nazism came after the Weimar Republic, so his lost punk boys in tattered and embroidered frocks and paw boots could have been interpreted as a warning for all of us.
At Art School, genderless was the keyword, but, while diversity prevailed on the runway, the clothes showed styling rather than designing prowess (most of us have already seen in our lives plenty of bias-cut dresses, skirts made with giant sequins or brocaded pencil skirts in bold shades such as fuchsia) and you suspected the brand is more about a sense of community than about garments, and maybe it could be developed into something more arty than fashionable (there were some original ideas in the hats made with repurposed materials including old boots by Shiori Takahashi, but they needed some direction as well).
Then in between such collections that maybe showed London has still some will to rebel and riot after all, there were moments of normalcore represented by Band of Outsiders's collection designed by Creative Director Angelo Van Mol, and featuring clothes that recombined '60s and '70s silhouettes and ideas (read corduroy suits and Kickers shoes), and by David Beckham, who won some undeserved enthusiastic reviews for the collection by brand Kent & Curwen that he co-owns.
Founded in 1926 by Eric Kent and Dorothy Curwen, and known for its regimental, club and collegiate ties, the brand is currently designed by Creative Director Daniel Kearns.
Rugby and cricket sweaters, and military and country inspired pieces prevailed all over the collection that touched on a lot of British tropes and also included womenswear looks.
There were also a few '20s references borrowed from "Peaky Blinders" as the label teamed up with the BBC series for a capsule collection (flat caps were included, minus razor blades into their peaks...), but the final impression was a remix of '90s trends combined with World War I uniforms, Mod suits and some random "Peaky Blinders" inspirations.
Samuel Ross's A-Cold-Wall* was instead in an Off-White/Virgil Abloh realm: having worked for him you don't actually know if Abloh has actually stolen Ross' ideas or if Ross is inspired by Abloh.
The young designer will have to leave behind casual words such as "Modern" boldly emblazoned on coats and scarves (mind you, in his case, minus the inverted commas...) and urban vests covered with large pockets if he wants to prove he is on a different and better level.
Despite interesting surface elaborations including some crocheted deconstructed elements, terracotta and teal tailored monochromatic suits and coats and the shirring technique employed to make plastic tops and pants in bold pastel colours, Craig Green didn't update his silhouettes and should have also stirred away from the multiple plaid tunics that didn't add anything to his fashion discourse and runway show.
Hussein Chalayan combined instead skiing and equestrian sports in his collection: the neon spashes were borrowed from the former, the horseback wellingtons from the latter, but at times there were uncertain results (see the overcomplicated trousers with cutouts donned with rubber boots). Tailored coats and functional knits were instead the stronger options, in an otherwise not so remarkable collection.
Yet if London is in a crisis (and was probably in a sombre mood after the premature death last week of one of its best designers, Joe Casely-Hayford), things aren't better in other countries and fashion capitals where the fashion circus is expected to stop.
Paris is still facing the protests of the yellow vests; Italy is in the hands of a populist government infatuated with the far-right, an Interior Minister and Deputy prime Minister who spends more time on Twitter or taking selfies in the streets with his fans, blaming migrants for everything that goes wrong in the country and shutting ports to rescue boats carrying refugees. In the meantime, America is still affected by the government shutdown. In a nutshell, at the moment fashion seems to be more irrelevant and frivolous than usual and there seems to be more important issues to deal with in our lives than thinking about what to wear next Winter if this Winter seems already too bleak to face.
Menswear-wise, international trade shows like the Pitti in Florence remain the best option for buyers, considering that they offer the chance to see more products and meet more brands and companies under the same roof.
Yet you wonder how long the shows can really go on. Maybe the end is near and we are just dancing on the proverbial sinking Titanic. But what's for sure is that this may be the very last edition of London Fashion Week Men's as we know it. Come Brexit or not, a new formula will probably be in place soon and, while the future is uncertain now, there is something very clear - Brexiters hope that once Great Britain gets out of the EU, the country will take back control of money and borders, and protect jobs in the UK, but you can bet that such jobs will not be in the fashion industry.
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