Our Paris correspondent at London Fashion Week

I’ll start with a curious fact from my biography: I have been living in Paris since I was eight years old and I write about fashion, Sometimes I fly to Milan for shows on duty. But I’ve never gone to London Fashion Week. Why? When your native, home fashion week is the busiest — Paris traditionally lasts the longest, nine days — and you have a supply of umbrellas, trench coats, coats, shoes and T-shirts for all occasions in the city, and you know the local winding subway like the back of your hand, it is difficult to voluntarily move from your favorite fashionable comfort zone to the stressful situation of a city that is not the most familiar. But the pandemic has changed our views on many things, so when my Japanese colleague Minako suggested going to the shows in London together, along with the Parisian habit of saying how to cut off, a short and uncompromising «NON» — «it’s difficult», «I need a visa», «pounds, not euros», I thought: and why not? And having coped with six weeks of waiting for a verdict — these are the deadlines for obtaining a visa to the UK — I rush on the high-speed Eurostar train to London.

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A post shared by Bora Aksu (@bora_aksu)

Any fashion week is a daytime program — a mix of shows, presentations, meetings in showrooms, and evening, secular — dinners and parties (for which there is hardly enough strength after getting up at 7 in the morning). But there are many new names here — graduates of CSM — Central Saint Martins (which is often called St. Martins in Russian) and LCF — London College of Fashion. The first show I attended — Bora Aksu takes place in a Gothic church in Pimlico to the shrill sounds of a cover of the rock ballad PJ Harvey Down By The Water. Bora likes to be inspired by strong women who have played a fatal role in history — and this time his collection of romantic dresses in shades of lilac, cotton candy and blue sky is dedicated to the French poet and historian of the early Middle Ages Christine de Pisan. Then I take a break for lunch with my friend DJ — an absolute plus of London, in that there are always a lot of Russian friends here who are ready to adjust to your crazy schedule.

Bora Aksu

And then I rush to the fashion show of the bright Poster Girl duo (Dua Lipa and Kendall Jenner adore him for sequins, hundreds of rhinestones and exceptional shiny fabrics). I fly into the hall when the show has already started (here the delays with the screenings are much shorter than in Paris! A maximum of 20 minutes instead of the traditional Parisian 30), but I am energized by parties: in London, designers sincerely love rhinestones and sequins and master the art of party dressing perfectly (from beginners in this style, be sure to pay attention not only to the brilliant images of Poster Girl, but also to the mini 16Arlington and Nadine Merabi catsuits).

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Poster Girl

In the afternoon of the first day, I go to the Newgen exhibition space of the main British fashion institution British Fashion Council in the building of the former Selfridges Hotel next to the legendary department store on Oxford Street for the debut show of American designer Conner Ives (he graduated from St. Martin’s just last year and has already managed to get, thanks to his Americana-themed T-shirts, to the exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum and to the list of LVMH Award finalists) with the main British rose Eddie Campbell, opening and closing the show in colorful outfits with the effect of color blocks. And then I have a difficult choice — to make it to the presentation of Rixo dresses in the spirit of «The Great Gatsby» or to go to the Mark Fast show at the Phonica vinyl record store in Soho — it will not be possible to do both because of traffic jams in the city. I’m running to the show: and I don’t regret it, Mark Fast plays tight-fitting bandage dresses, knitwear and down jackets in neon shades, like at night city signs.

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Marc Fast

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Conner Ives

There is a pause in my schedule, I miss the passage of Irina Shayk in a multi-layered image from pieces of patchwork quilts of local anfan terribl and the winner of the international Woolmark Prize Matty Bovan — it is more difficult to get to the presentations in London than in any other fashion capital, there is its own fashion ecosystem. Since most often we are talking about small brands without a budget for an office in Russia, and sometimes in France, there is nowhere to wait for help, all hope is just luck. The first day ends with a screening of Stephen Stocky Daley’s S.S. Daley — one of the nominees for this year’s LVMH award — and after watching his fabulous story about the most dramatic moments of the class struggle in England to piercing music with theatrical performance and decor from hundreds of the most curious finds from London flea markets and red roses — I have no doubt that the jury of the prestigious fashion competition will definitely not leave him unnoticed.

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SS Daley

What about the evening program? The day before the trip, a friend of a PR woman from London, Lois, writes to me and invites her new client Nadine Merabi to dinner, I agree. A surprise awaits me — Nadine wants every guest to come in one of the images from the new collection. Lois’s team sends me a choice — and I, as a person who has lived in Paris for most of a conscious fashion life, get lost. I have already agreed to come, dinner is four minutes from my hotel in Mayfair, and no one will believe in any fictitious reason for refusal. You will have to get out of the comfort zone of Parisian chic — skinny jeans, white T-shirts and blazers in the spirit of Eddie Slimane and small black dresses according to the testament of Mademoiselle Chanel — and play by the rules of London. Go Big or Go Home. My friend, music agent Ivika, helps with the choice of feathers and sequins (his hobby is to find treasures for the house at the best price at flea markets in France). He reduces the choice of thirty images to two that may suit me. A sapphire mini-mini dress with sequins much higher than the knee? Or a tight-fitting red velvet catsuit with sequins and feathers? Since English women will not understand black tights with mini, I choose the warmest of evils — a jumpsuit that fits, but covers most of the body.

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Robyn Lynch

I probably haven’t felt so terribly excited before a social outing since the school graduation. My combat friend Sonya is brought to my hotel (ironically, we went to the same prom together) and helps me to glue an extra couple of centimeters of length with double-sided tape, fastens the jumpsuit on the back, encourages me with compliments and escorts me around typical London puddles to the restaurant doors. When I walk into the gym and see my new professional family in sequins and feathers, the fear evaporates. Lesson note: don’t be afraid to try something new. And yes, Parisians have a lot to learn from British ladies in sequins and feathers. Hey, London Fashion Week, I think I will be back! 

For five days of shows in London, my head is spinning from a new generation of young designers and their bright vision of fashion. Among my highlights is the show of last year’s LVMH Award winner Nensi Dojaka with tight little black mesh dresses and fitted ruby-colored blazers for all body types.

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Nensi Dojaka

By the way, Yuhan Wang had a similar, real attitude to sexy body positivism — where models of very different proportions walked in mini dresses made of eco-leather and knitted crop tops with cats (the fluffy cat of Yuhan herself also appeared on the podium on the hands of a model in an eco-fur coat, causing emotion in the audience and getting into all Instagram stories). In London, and with the concept of diversity — fashion for everyone — everything is also as progressive as possible. For example, all the editors were eager to show the British designer of West African descent Foday Dumbuya and his label Labrum London with a choir that sang gospel songs while the models walked the runway in blazers with contrasting prints and long coats. There was nowhere to fall on the Ozwald Boateng show at the Savoy Theater (there is now a musical based on «Beauty») — the first dark-skinned tailor from Savile Row Boateng triumphantly returned to fashion Week after a 12-year pause with a presentation dedicated to the dark-skinned talents of their Great Britain.   

Yuhan Wang

One of the unusual discoveries is the Halpern show with the brightest images for parties with fringes, rhinestones and sandals on the highest platform in a hangar in Brixton, a new fashionable area of London (with its energy it resembles Woody Allen’s Brooklyn or the Paris Twentieth Arrondissement — an alternative to the Marais).

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Halpern

There was no time in the schedule for a detailed study — it was necessary to fly to the show of the chief master of the British Haute Couture Richard Queen with the London Chamber Orchestra live Symphony Orchestra in the center of the hall, pop diva Samantha Harvey and The Back Choir. The Parisian brand Paul & Joe will now be shown in London — their defile-dedication to the British founder of the suffragette movement Emmeline Pankhurst was held at the Barbican in the building of the former monastery of the 14th century Charterhouse (it resembled Hogwarts in atmosphere). Roksanda Ilincic invited guests to the halls of Tate Britain, where she showed her version of a comfortable, practical and poetic wardrobe for the post-pandemic world, and also presented her colorful collaboration of outerwear with the sports brand Fila. The Preen show of the duo Thea Bregazzi and Justin Thornton at the iconic eighties Heaven club became a real dance performance, where dancers from the English National Ballet School took the place of the models: they moved elegantly in lace dresses and XXL bombers.

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And Erdem Moralioglu completed the fashion week with his strongest collection, inviting us to a chamber concert with piano at Sadler’s Wells Theater, where models walked in the dark between points of light in images inspired by Berlin’s elegant representatives of the creative bohemia of the thirties, who had already received the right to vote in elections and invented the very first nightclubs only for women. And of course, not without sequins with feathers.

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Erdem

Ageeva Lydia

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