The look is tough rather than prissy, but still glamorous. Step forward Cara Delevingne and the high-fashion tomboys
This London fashion week was billed as a festival of British glamour. With the Baftas falling slap bang in the middle of the catwalk schedule, the build-up buzz was about celebrating showstopping frocks, on the catwalk and the red carpet.
But life in London is never that predictable. It didn't quite turn out like that: Angelina Jolie ruled over the Bafta red carpet in a tuxedo trouser suit, and on the catwalk a new muse – the high-fashion tomboy – kicked the pastel-clad, ladylike look into touch. After seasons of ricocheting between oversexed party dresses and po-faced, white-shirted androgyny, fashion has hit upon a new look that feels right for now. It is tomboy rather than girly, but still glamorous; tough rather than prissy, but not grungey or scruffy. It is a graffiti-coloured fake-fur jacket or a metallic puffa, rather than a mink or a parka. It is a loose, calf-length skirt you can stride out in, rather than a pencil skirt or skinny jeans. It is a luxe rucksack, rather than a precious clutch or a courier-style cross-body bag.
Not only is the high-fashion tomboy walking the red carpet and the catwalk, she's also hanging out around the shows snapping pictures on her iPhone, and inside sitting in the front row.
Every other young woman within a 200-yard radius of the Somerset House courtyard this week was in a wool beanie hat, but with long, blow-dried, possibly slightly tonged hair carefully arranged underneath. That touch of flirtation and sex appeal is key: this is absolutely not about androgyny in a sexless way.
When Kate Moss rocked up at the Topshop show at the Tate Modern, she was working a similar vibe: a camouflage-print, olive-green silk jumpsuit, with heeled ankle boots and loose but glossy hair. Cara Delevingne, with her classic blonde good looks and her silly-face selfies, her designer wardrobe and her trainers, is the ultimate high-fashion-tomboy pinup, and her influence is ever more pervasive. Her high-jinks antics are compulsive click-bait on the gossip websites, so much so that the groomed-yummy-mummy-model-holds-hand-on-school-run paparazzi snap is dying a slow death in the shade. This season, Cara was commissioned by Mulberry to design a capsule collection of handbags. All three of the designs feature detachable rucksack straps, so that they can be worn as backpacks: a defiantly tomboy take on the It bag.
The tone of London fashion week was set by the two It boys, Christopher Kane and JW Anderson. Kane's woman has always been a tomboy at heart. Even in a mini dress, she'll wear clompy shoes or have scruffy hair. And the contrast isn't of the affected, let's-be-clever-and-put-an-arch-twist-on-everything school; it's more visceral and real than that, even when it's as bonkers as a nylon mac with a mink lining. The autumn collection served up cocktail frocks in slick, waterproof fabrics and fancy knits in highlighter-pen neons. Anderson, who began his career in menswear before embarking on womenswear, plays with androgyny in his designs for both sexes and his meteoric rise has pushed notions of boy-girl dressing on to fashion's agenda. This season, the womanly shape of long, fluted skirts contrasted with high collars and futuristic convex shapes worn on the top half.
The absence of decolletage is key with the new tomboy. Visible cleavage is becoming as outdated, and therefore as ageing, as overplucked eyebrows. At Eudon Choi, rollneck sweaters were worn underneath dresses, underneath sporty jackets, under fluffy evening coats. The tomboy's go-to outfit for autumn is a chunky top – sweater, bomber or biker jacket, or oversized tailoring – with a calf-length skirt. The midi-length skirt might seem counterintuitive as a tomboy piece, but it's the fact that it's not literal – that it's not about wearing dungarees and climbing trees – that makes the new tomboy a wearable look. At Jonathan Saunders, a calf-length skirt was worn with a biker jacket; at Richard Nicoll, it was paired with a simple knit; at Topshop, with a puffa jacket. Sporty shapes with a glamorous spin were a recurring motif: see Tom Ford's fabulous Jay-Z-riffing sequinned football shirts, and the fur jackets in boxy, linebacker shapes and garish, football-strip colours at the gorgeous Preen show.
Burberry's Bloomsbury girls, in their hand-painted silk and organdy, could hardly be called tomboys. And yet, there is a link. Christopher Bailey has had Bloomsbury on the mind on and off for several seasons, with this collection being the most explicit in its reference. The Bloomsbury set, with their interest in the notion of the androgynous mind, also played with androgyny in their dress. This season's tomboys – with their Pippi Longstocking catwalk plaits and their rediscovered enthusiasm for trainers – have more Cara Delevingne in the mix than Virginia Woolf. But still – as a trio of heroines, it's a moodboard no one would have predicted for red-carpet season.