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There was only one show in the City of London this weekend, and it was The Queue. But the catwalks of London Fashion Week went viral.
“I felt it was important to keep going, because this is a time when London needs to stick together, and right now some of the city’s young designers are in danger of losing their business,” said designer Jonathan Anderson after the JW Anderson show.
A black T-shirt emblazoned with the words “Her Majesty the Queen 1926-2022” was included with a miniskirt made of plastic computer keys, stitched into a mosaic of letters and plastic shark fins worn by model and author Emily Ratajkowski.
The catwalk started on Soho Street before the crash barriers filled central London throughout the weekend before plunging into a video game arcade.
After the stage, Anderson happily defended the mismatched combination of looks.
“London has felt absolutely extraordinary over the past week. I have never known an energy like his. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Soho this busy, and it’s all very rude. People are drinking but they’re being pretty, you know? It’s very British.”
The late addition of the t-shirt – in a font copied from the Transport for London tribute posters that appeared at stops across the capital on the night of the Queen’s death – “reminds me of what this moment really was, 20 years on when I look at pictures of this collection,” he added.
The dilemma of whether to pay homage to the Queen, or not, between party dresses, has divided London Fashion Week.
As it happens, Steven Stokey-Daley’s show is about privilege, gender and disadvantage in the British upper classes, but it has nothing to do with the Queen. In the Grand Victoriana of St Pancras Hotel, actors read extracts from love letters written between Vita Sackville West and Violet Trefusis.
1930s queer gardener Sissinghurst – Calico shirts, wide-legged corduroy pants, merino sweaters – the 100-year-old words of two women walking through a patriarchal society accompanied the gender-fluid clothes.
The mood at Sunday’s shows was low key. The champagne trays are out; Designer Nancy Dojaka instead gave each guest a white hydrangea bud. But the celebrity front row was spotted at Regina Pio’s show, with actress Sharon Horgan and singer Jessie Ware appearing to support the young designer.
On the 28th floor of a New London skyscraper, Pio says she was pondering Tolstoy’s quote, “If a man knows how to work and love, he can live well in this world”—and how when Tolstoy wrote those words, he was thinking only of men.
Pio, whose innovative tailoring and light-touch aesthetic have made her a fashion influencer, said she wanted to celebrate what it means for women to combine life with work and love. They wore loose pants, and stretchy lace dresses with low heels, lemon, sage, duck egg blue – and occasionally, black.
Michael Halpern’s show began in silence with a model wearing a crown-length pale blue gown and a silk hat tucked under her chin.
American-born, the designer is about to become a British citizen, and wanted “a quiet moment to say thank you to the country that gave me a career, a friendship, a full life.”
Once the dress hit the catwalk, David Bowie’s Cat People came into play, and a strappy leopard print dress changed the mood.
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