Royal Doulton china, kebab boxes and supermarket carrier bags are this season’s references on the London catwalks. What does this new down-to-earth vibe mean for our real-life wardrobes next spring?
A few snapshots from this London fashion week. Christopher Kane backstage after his show talking about the smell of bleach in his house that accompanies having a new French bulldog puppy, and the frills of the Royal Doulton figurines that his mum used to polish obsessively when he was growing up in Glasgow. Cindy Crawford’s model children, Kaia and Presley Gerber, catwalking at Burberry in check caps past a photography exhibit that included Martin Parr’s 1981 shot of Dubliners hunched under flimsy umbrellas as they battle rush-hour rain. (As an image of fashion in the rain, that shot is about as far from the romantic iconography of the raindrop-dappled, collar-popped Burberry trench as it is possible to imagine.) Plasticky bucket hats at Donatella Versace’s Versus show. The deadpan tones of Neil Tennant singing Pet Shop Boys’ West End Girls, a song that emerged as the unexpected theme tune for the season when it opened both the Burberry and Topshop shows. A skirt and a top made from rough linen tea towels at JW Anderson, frilly cushion-handbags at Mother of Pearl, a silver clutch bag moulded from the shape of a polystyrene kebab box at Anya Hindmarch. Designer Richard Malone cheerfully naming the bright colour palette of his dresses as a homage to supermarket carrier bags: Tesco blue, Co-op turquoise.
This is street style, but not as fashion usually knows it. This is not the peacocking Insta-bait that has become the default uniform of London fashion week, all thousand-pound tracksuits and limited-edition bumbags. This is street as in ground-level, not street in the sense of being the coolest kids on the block. Actual real life, not a performative version of it. And this is different. Because from its beginnings as a breath-of-fresh-air backlash against the stuffiness of the catwalk, the street-style arm of fashion has over the past few years calcified into a bloodless beauty contest driven by cold, hard cash. One survey released on the eve of fashion week estimated that micro-influencers – those with about 10,000 social media followers – can command a fee of £3,000 a post, with many of these posts clustered around the venues and hashtags of fashion week.
Continue reading...