Thursday at London Fashion Week: The Real Deal

Former Fashion Editor Jess Cooper is giving The Gryphon readers a look behind the curtain as she takes on September’s London Fashion Week.

Student publications are – as a rule – not allowed behind the locked gates of London Fashion Week. To even get press accreditation, you must jump through hoops and leap over every hurdle.

And yet, here we are. After a fabulous opportunity provided by Sarah Mower at the British Fashion Council to attend as one of her guests, I am happy to report that for this year’s September season, I will be bringing you daily updates, rundowns and the real deal of what London Fashion Week is actually like, as a student with no connections, no journalism degree and no clue what she is doing.

So, without further ado, here is what went down at day one of the biggest fashion industry event in the country: London Fashion Week.

Francesca Lake at The Strand

For Francesca Lake, this Spring/Summer 27 show entitled “Wake The Town” marked her official on-schedule debut as a designer. Described in the show program as an “exploration of contradiction and opposing worlds”, Lake’s work explores her Jamaican roots whilst asking the audience of this work to question their own understanding of how clothing informs identity.

This idea of contradiction is seen most poignantly in two opposing looks that head down the runway; a black mourning dress feeling solemn and eerie directly contrasted with a pure white gown covered in doilies and pillows. Phenomenal tailoring and strong understanding of construction gives this collection a solid technical backbone, whilst the concept plays around with rebuilding and reforming identity.

Quite poignantly, the program featured a quote from Virginia Woolf’s Orlando about the power of clothing: “They change our view of the world; and the world’s view of us”.

The wider exhibition featured some of Lake’s poetry displayed on tapestries, including a particularly striking piece of prose entitled ‘Uniform’, which explored how individuality can even seep in through rigid dress codes and how these dress codes can still bind us together regardless of our social standing.

Becoming immersed in Francesca Lake’s universe and more importantly her story was an incredibly easy task, and I am sure this is the first of many more LFW shows for the label.

Barbour at Saatchi Gallery

I guess a common misconception about London Fashion Week is that everything is grand runway show, when in fact many of the events on the week’s schedule take the form of activations, exhibitions and presentations. This was the case for Barbour, who curated an exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery celebrating their iconic tartan.

Thursday was the exclusive press event, with the gallery being opened to the public across Friday and Saturday. Exploring the five generations of Barbour from Scotland to South Shields, the spaces immersed attendees in the design world behind one of the most legendary brands.

Highlights included a live demonstration of rewaxing and repairing a damaged jacket, a history of collaborations with charities such as Oxfam and brands like Paul Smith and five designs that were successful in a British Fashion Council competition. Of these designs, one by Leo Hill-Daniel, a Salford graduate, looked at reworking a Barbour jacket to include a picnic blanket in a striking display.

Birmingham City University at Somerset House

As a proud Brummie, my personal highlight of the day was the Birmingham City University presentation. With models roaming the space demonstrating the wearability of the student’s designs, it was an exciting space to be in to close the day, with the room feeling alive with new and creative talent.

This is what is particularly notable about London Fashion Week: it is full of champions of new and emerging talent. And as a new talent myself (not in the traditional way), I am thrilled to see what the rest of the week holds.

Words by Jess Cooper