London fashion week watches young British designer deliver an autumn/winter collection that fizzes with energy and ideas
This is what grace under pressure looks like. Last month Christopher Kane sold a 51% stake in his label to PPR, parent group of top-flight labels including Gucci, Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen. François-Henri Pinault, chairman and CEO of PPR, described the Dalston-based company as having "tremendous intrinsic growth potential" and spoke of his "great ambitions for the brand", thought to include the first Christopher Kane boutique and a secondary, more accessible line within the next two years.
Kane's autumn collection, shown on the London fashion week catwalk on Monday, was a bigger event than ever before, with 55 models and a 900-strong audience.
The question was, would Kane's work – intense, instinctive, with ideas crammed into every margin – buckle under the pressure? Would his curve ball catwalk shows be replaced by box-ticking, commercial renditions of whatever trend the US department store buyers are currently relying on for sell-through?
Quite the opposite, as it turned out. The amplified scale seems to have energised Kane rather than stifling him, and there were enough ideas here for four or five collections. First came camouflage prints in misty blues, skirts trimmed with patent kilt buckles. Next came a series of burgundy and navy dresses, panels of velvet delicately strung together by braid.
This was followed by coats with silky feathers sprouting along the seams, so that the models looked like very slender teddy bears spilling their couture stuffing. It didn't all work – the outsize fox fur trims were a jarringly obvious "luxe" touch which sat oddly with the rest of the collection – but it was a feast for the eyes.
Kane, 30, is the first from his generation of London designers to make the leap from London fashion week star to big-time player. The evidence of this week so far is that PPR backed the right horse. Many of the hip names who hit the sweet spot in September have shown slightly flat, underwhelming collections this time around, as if the pressure of being taken seriously has induced catwalk stage fright.
In the final section, Kane spelled out the starting point of this collection, with screenprint renditions of a cross-section of a brain. Backstage after the show, he explained how he had been looking at MRI scans, "and how in a healthy brain, there are all these explosions going on".
Travelling in upstate New York, he found some pieces of lace which seemed to mimic the patterns; from there, the idea evolved into what he termed the "brain trim" fragments in the velvet dresses, and the feathered seams, which connected with projecting the inside on to the outside, and using sheer tulle edged with black velvet piping to echo x-ray images. "I didn't want to do, you know, the obvious," added Kane, rather unnecessarily.
Kane's longtime mentor Donatella Versace declared it his "best show ever" as she delivered a backstage hug. Salma Hayek, movie star – and more pertinently in this scenario, the wife of Pinault – pronounced it "amazing." Louise Wilson of Kane's alma mater, Central Saint Martins, praised the "grandiose gesture" of the sheer number of ideas. Still clutching a lint roller like a fashion week rosary, Tammy Kane, the designer's sister and close collaborator, denied that Kane had come up with more ideas in response to the added pressure. "To be honest, we could have done a show like this every season," she said. "It's just that we didn't have the opportunity until now."
While Kane sets out to prove he can cut it in the top flight, Burberry has set itself the opposite challenge. Designer Christopher Bailey believes Burberry can be both a global powerhouse brand and one with which consumers feel a warm, emotional connection. It is an ambitious balancing act. But Burberry – ahead of the curve in its commitment to digital engagement and utilising social media to form relationships with potential customers – is better placed than any other brand to pull it off.
This collection, entitled Trench Kissing, was a catwalk allegory of Bailey's devising. The trenchcoat-clad beauties played the role of Christine Keeler, while the provocative, rubber-and-leopard collection represented the naughty side of the establishment – which in this case is, of course, Burberry itself.
"I guess I wanted to say that even something very establishment and serious, like a big heritage brand, can have a sexy, subversive, romantic side," said Bailey after the show.
Keeler looked good in a trenchcoat; she also looked great naked. On the catwalk these two images were deliberately blurred: a trenchcoat in transparent coloured rubber was worn over heart-print knickers, while slinky leopard tailoring was accessorised with fetishistic gold-metal belts.
And should there be anyone watching at home who still does not feel the love – not only are the heart-print handbags available to order directly from the livestreaming of this show, but online customisation enables them to be delivered monogrammed with the customer's initials.
After Burberry's Kensington Gardens show, attention turned to Lancaster House in St James, where Tom Ford chose to hold his first official catwalk show since parting ways with Yves Saint Laurent in 2004. After his phenomenal success at Gucci, Ford walked away from the catwalk schedules nine years ago with a significant personal legacy and enormous personal wealth, two assets which allow him the freedom to engage with the fashion industry on his own terms. This season, that meant a catwalk show staged not on the bigger platforms of New York or Paris but within walking distance of his Mayfair base.
The show is a new and glamorous feather in the cap for the once humble LFW: Ford's red-carpet looks, for men and women, have established him as a fashion player in the Hollywood machine on a scale not achieved since the heyday of Giorgio Armani.