London Fashion Week Full Of Colour And Ridiculousness, Unlike New York

London Fashion Week winds up today, and it looks like while New York Fashion Week last week was a moping ball of neuroses concerning the recession, London is determined to sweep away the downturn with the broom of fabulousness.

In New York, looks were described as “aggressive”, from designers fraught with recession panic. You had Diane Von Furstenberg dressing us like nomads in readiness for the recession-triggered, Cormac McCarthyite apocalypse that will see us trudging toward the Appalachians in search of natural resources; Narciso Rodriguez’s combo of plastic helmet and monochrome camoflague mooted a sleekly dressed police state where you presumably get coshed with Philip Starck batons and gassed with artisanal scent. 

Betsey Johnson, Donna Karen and Vera Wang all cancelled their costly catwalk shows, and Alice Temperley held hers online. But Zac Posen and Marc Jacobs turned the cost-cutting to their advantage – Posen persuading Steinway to lend him five grand pianos for free to act as his backdrop, Jacobs cutting his invitation list to 500 from 2,000 and thus reinforcing his desirability and sending NY fashionistas into life-threatening bouts of status anxiety. Christian Siriano resorted to clawing back cash via a Faustian pact with LG, whereby his clothes featured their new handset tucked into a special pocket. And the new icon of American fashion is Michelle Obama, championing the small, pricey designer alongside the mass market and affordable, a style known amongst obsessive term-coiners as “high-low dressing”. It was all so boring that Paris Hilton just texted her mates instead of watching the shows.

No such sobriety in London however. You had Giles Deacon’s cycloptic Russian egg, Luella’s fluoro-goth chavs, PPQ’s cheerful mourning wear, Mario Schwab’s Italodisco futurism, and St Martin’s students not giving a toss about entering a recessed marketplace. Henry Holland said, in an unwitting Barleyism, that he got his inspiration from a Dulux paint card; Nicole Fahri’s colour-drenched collection equally looked like it had been designed by an acid-fried magpie, as did Kinder Aggugini’s, which, in his own words, was the fashion equivalent of a “musical mashup” (it’s as bad as it sounds). The recession has even been an inspiration to Sienna Miller: “If anything, the recession pushed us into doing this show. It was either blur into all those other labels or make a statement”. Unfortunately they plumped for the former of those options, but the thought was there.

Just as in Paris last month, where Chanel’s president of fashion, Bruno Pavolovsky, said that couture “exists to keep our customers dreaming”, you had Qasimi in London saying fashion “is about dreaming… especially in times like this.” And London shares Paris’s “fuck it” attitude to budgets. Karl Lagerfeld said last month that: “We have no budget, we do what we want and throwing money out the window brings money back in through the front door”; London had the largest number of shows in its history (105), and Boris has been flying in buyers and designers from all over the world to make sure the fashion industry stays buoyant.

The other main trend, other than London gunning for the position of the most ethical of the Fashion Weeks, is designers trying to assert the importance of spending lots of money on clothes. “Women appreciate clothes that they can invest in now, and we are actually doing really well”, said Christopher Kane; “If you’re only going to spend half your usual budget, buying only five pieces rather than 10, then you want them to be special, not basics”, said Maria Pinto, designer to Michelle Obama.

So people will be spending less, but will still spend a lot? It’s all too confusing for the editor of Women’s Wear Daily, who comes up with this bit of genuine nonsense, while attempting to highlight the importance of accessorising in a recession: “Inherently, the aspect of accessories is that they’re that extra added touch, and they have the ability to transform a wardrobe. So I think that even if the price ticket doesn’t reflect it, mentally, going into it, you don’t think you’re making as big a purchase”. Say what girl?

It seems that if you fire together a few looks in a vibe-crucible, attach a hefty price tag and get Daisy Lowe to wear it, people with money will be confused into buying it, while the rest of us will wait for the Topshop version. That’s how we’ve rolled for the last few years, and it doesn’t look like a recession is going to change that.

Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Creative Economy | February 25, 2009 12:57PM |