Catwalk Reports from The LFW Daily
Today's reports by Dolly Jones, Editor, vogue.com
PRINGLE OF SCOTLAND
Alistair Carr is the young man tasked with the brief to reinvent Pringle of Scotland for the 21st century. The designer, who has worked most recently for Balenciaga, has been on the job since March, but as this is a knitwear house, and a collection for Spring and Summer, it wasn’t the ideal season to roll out his full woolly new signature for Pringle. Still, from the get-go this new-look Pringle was strong, slick fashion with a capital F. Carr’s Pringle woman likes her slim, fitted trousers (his came in grey, or with a black back and grey front) and she likes a jumper (patterned or in bold colours such as aqua or pink). She also loves a back-to-front cardigan – worn buttoned only at the nape to reveal a beguiling slice of back – with a slouchy trouser. On a more feminine note, Carr played with drape and offered dresses that appeared to be two knee-length cardigans buttoned together in an asymmetric way. The general feeling here was that Carr had made an excellent start.
BURBERRY PRORSUM
Did I really need to go to the Burberry Prorsum show? Did any of us? I mean, Christopher Bailey and team Burberry (or should that be @Burberry, its Twitter handle has almost 532,000 followers) streamed the show live, and tweeted images of each look before it hit the runway. So, essentially, my assistant had a better view watching from our office. But she said she felt like
a voyeur, whereas I was present and liking what I saw. The Burberry message for S/S 12 can be measured with a coat: next season the trench is full-skirted with a Peruvian-inspired textile belt. Or is it cut into a cropped parka? There were colour-blocked raffia caps with pompom tops, wicker platform shoes, great bobbly knits and raffia totes with leather edging. Overblown textures and textiles were very much the order of the day, with batik and African weaves on coats; and the pencil skirts were sex on legs. The only jarring note was that this was a Spring and Summer collection…
MICHAEL VAN DER HAM
For his third solo outing on the LFW runway, Michael van der Ham switched up his fashion game. The Dutch Central Saint Martins graduate, who is part of the BFC’s NEWGEN programme sponsored by Topshop, is best known for his innovative vintage textile patchworks, which he turns into cool and unusual dresses. These were evident in the collection, but didn’t dominate. Seeing the limitations – not to mention the difficulty in sourcing the rare fabrics – in that particular technique, van der Ham has moved everything on. First of all, the patchworks: he didn’t do them on his buttoned-up blouses and easy silk T-shirts (such a clever, easy layering idea), he designed a print that looked like a patchwork. Smart. He also, like Christopher Kane and Erdem this LFW, discovered the fun to be had with Lurex-shot brocades – his pink floral brocade trousers and blouse combo was my outfit of the day. And all finished with very sexy van der Ham-print Louboutin shoes.
ERDEM
Ahhhhh. Deep sigh. It’s an Erdem show. Time to let the stress of the busiest day of London Fashion Week ebb away for 20 minutes of what you just know will be the fashion-show equivalent of the Garden of Eden. Or Looks We Will All (want to) Wear to Cool Weddings Next Summer. As we took our seats at the stunning Savoy ballroom, the Korean woman beside me began to titter. “Why are you laughing?” I asked. “Oh, Erdem is playing China’s biggest pop-star woman!” Sure enough, a dreamy, incomprehensible wailing emanated from backstage, then we were away with an explosion of florals – the openers were a series of stunning blue collages of lace and flower embroidery in trench coat, prim dress and shift dress form. The Erdem dress alphabet, basically. Then Erdem (or Mr Lovely, as I call him) paired a pristine crisp white shirt with a white lace sunray-pleat skirt, and sent out a buttercup-yellow lace dress, and we all sighed again. And smiled.