London fashion week sees good old-fashioned desirability from retailer, glamour from L'Wren Scott and elegance from Mulberry
The traditional catwalk show – a small, elite group of people viewing clothes that will be accessible and affordable to a small, elite group of people – is dead. Topshop can claim that prized scalp.
The Topshop Unique fashion show was the first to be staged in the Tanks at the Tate Modern, the first to be live-streamed on the YouTube home page, the first to offer fashion-hungry consumers the chance to follow a "model's eye view" camera showing what a catwalk show looks like from Cara Delevingne's point of view. And customers who order pieces from the show now will receive them first – three months before they hit the shop floor.
None of this matters unless the clothes have good old-fashioned desirability. But there was plenty here to translate event-buzz into sales. Soft shearling coats in candyfloss pink and sensuous aubergine sequin eveningwear, kilt-pleated full skirts and punky PVC workwear pushed all this season's trend buttons.
Shepherd's pie with a Rolling Stone was the very British form of glamour served up by L'Wren Scott for her first London fashion week show. The American designer's boyfriend, Sir Mick Jagger, sat between Anna Wintour and Daphne Guinness as Scott introduced the British fashion industry to the concept of the shlunch: a show at which lunch is served. (Brunch? So last year.)
Scott's opulent show, on a catwalk running beneath the peerless chandeliers of Westminster's grand Institute of Civil Engineers, felt symbolic of the newly luxe and glossy tone for London fashion week. Inspired by the paintings of Gustav Klimt, Scott termed her dramatic, tactile collection "wearable decadence", a concept she developed into gold-leaf tattoos, and gowns embroidered in bugle beads coated in 23-carat gold.
Backstage after her Claridges catwalk show, the Mulberry designer, Emma Hill, said her elegant and vivid collection, inspired by the English countryside at night, had been about "going back to our roots, and at the same time going luxe. Next-level luxe." Example: the bag-of-the-season, always the touchstone of where Mulberry is at, is the Suffolk: a doctor's-style bag which harks back to the original Mulberry It bag, the Bayswater, but with added hardware and framing (for which read: a posher customer base, and a higher price tag).
The comedy touches that have helped give Mulberry a stratospheric profile in the blogosphere and on social media were toned down in favour of a confident emphasis on chic windowpane check wool coats and jackets and delicate leather capes and jackets.
Natalie Massenet, the new chair of the British Fashion Council, was thrilled with how the first London fashion week of her tenure had begun. "You can feel the impact and excitement already," she said. Massenet, who is working alongside the British Fashion Council's Caroline Rush, has ambitions for the UK fashion industry that extend far beyond this week's catwalks. "London fashion week is the showpiece of our industry, but there are other global brands that are based in London. We've got Mulberry and Burberry on the catwalk schedule – but we've also got Victoria Beckham, Stella McCartney and Jimmy Choo, who are generating jobs and income in London.
"We've reached a point now where we should have the confidence to celebrate those brands, wherever they show. Victoria Beckham was one of the most talked-about brands at New York fashion week – well, that's great for British fashion. Once upon a time there was a sense that if we brought Stella [McCartney] and [Alexander] McQueen back to London, we'd have done our job, but Caroline and I don't see it as that simplistic."
The epithets routinely appended to London fashion week are innovative and creative. To those, Massenet "would like to plug in global, strategic, businesslike, consumer-focused."
London fashion week "is not just an industry event any more", added Massenet. "Fashion is a consumer sport."
Within the city, closer ties are being forged "with the mayor's office, with retailers and with parallel industries such as film". Beyond that, Massenet's background as the head of internet shopping phenomenon Net-A-Porter.com ensures that the new regime is aware that "the internet has transformed the potential of what fashion week can be". So far, the London catwalk shows are livestreamed to 120 countries. This, noted Rush breezily, is "a good start".