London Fashion Week AW15: Part Two
So that’s one day’s post, about a fifth, maybe less, of the post we get at LLG HQ for London Fashion Week. When you consider that on the Sunday there were twenty-one shows and presentations on the official schedule, starting at 0900hrs in King’s Cross and finishing around 2100hrs at Tate Britain in Pimlico, not to mention countless off schedule shows at Fashion Scout and elsewhere that’s an awful lot of invitations.
(I wrote about Friday – through Sunday at LFW here)
In a way, the easiest day to manage is Monday. These shows are the big guns, and you know that you’ll want to to go every on-schedule show for which you have snagged a ticket. The BFC (British Fashion Council) legislate for this with very few presentations on the half hours – there are only thirteen official shows and one presentation.
Monday is Burberry day, so it seemed appropriate to get started with some blusher from this palette from Burberry Beauty’s SS15 runway collection.
First up was a non-LFW activity only a short stroll from The May Fair Hotel, where I was staying. I had been invited for an appointment to examine the haute couture collection. I’ll be covering this later, but suffice to say getting the opportunity to get up close and personal with couture is a very, very rare opportunity.
Afterwards Susie and I sped off to Roksanda, held in the sports hall of the Seymour Place Leisure Centre (where Hunter showed last season). This was a bright, exuberant collection, using the clever juxtapositioning of unlikely colours that she does so well.
A brisk walk took me south again to The Old Selfridges Hotel, behind the department store for Erdem, always an LFW highlight.
This season he had commissioned a set, a series of rooms, from Robin Brown, who had showed a piece at last year’s Frieze Masters called The Collector, which imagined a home in the 1950s filled with collections of magazines, art, cases and more. Everything from the drink bottles to the prints was authentic.
Leaving Erdem’s world, a cross between Velasquez-inspired dresses and the kind of room I could imagine Sylvia Plath inhabiting – complete with typewriter and discarded paper, I cabbed it to Kensington for a Mulberry showroom appointment to see the AW15 presentation.
Even brisker walking, against the clock next to Kensington Gore to drop in for a millisecond to see my friends at All Saints. Shearling is clearly already going to be a huge story for AW15, and ALL Saints are right on the money.
Hailing a cab, I zoomed through Hyde Park to Burberry, this year in the usual giant marquee, in Kensington Gardens off the Bayswater Road.
It was an extraordinary spectacle as always but it’s hard to see the clothes properly, so no photos here. Afterwards to OSMAN at Tate Britain, and thence to Tate Modern with Colin.
One of the photographer’s pits in the Turbine Hall.
One of the things I love about LFW is the impromptu tour of London’s landmarks. Here’s the Houses of Parliament en route to my hotel to pick up my cases.
The Church of St Clement Danes.
After a quick pitstop at home in Camden to dump my cases and grab a snack, I headed to Peter Pilotto in the Old Sorting Office, a huge empty concrete industrial space off Oxford Street. Lots more vibrant colour and some great shoes by Nicholas Kirkwood.
Giles was a beautiful gothic romance, held in a series of small interconnecting rooms in the old UCL buildings in Holborn.
The very final show of the day was in the basement of the NCP car park on Brewer Street in Soho. All of the glamour, all of the time. Note the thermal blankets we were given to keep warm.
Monday morning dawned bright and early with Anya Hindmarch’s show at Old Billingsgate Market, out near the Tower of London. The show was inspired by the M1 (yes, really), and the seat snacks were sponsored by roadside restaurant Little Chef. I (and Twitter) was clearly hoping for hash browns and baked beans. We got (very nice) pastries instead.
When we were little if you cleared your plate you got a Little Chef lollipop. Here’s the grown up version.
I was thrilled to be transported around the shows by The Cambridge Satchel Company taxi, supporting their rather brilliant Peanuts collaboration. (I wrote about it here.)
