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Into the Woods

2012-02-21T08:18:13+00:00

If I've hit the snooze button on posting, I promise there is good reason but I was waiting for something mammoth and this was exactly that. Hopefully some of you tuned in to the stream of McQ's show last night but I know how easy it is to forget to time into a live stream so I'm hoping that you'll relish in the palpitating moments backstage before, what I thought was one of the most memorable shows I've seen in a LONG time. The excacerbated excited tingling may have been caused by the sheer opportunity that I got to go backstage in what was a fairly tight and closed set. Still, given that one of the first things that I saw when I walked in backstage was Kristen McMenamy stalking around demi-dressed in a robe and a skintight tulle top with velvet appliqued leaves, with an exaggerated coil of hair atop her head, I think exclamation mark laden excitement is well and truly called for.

Let's put this McQ show into context first and foremost. It is the first time Alexander McQueen's diffusion line McQ has ever had a show. It's been about ten years since Alexander McQueen the brand has staged any sort of show in London. McQ the diffusion line, launched back in 2006 has been a dritfting label of the uber casual and denim-based offerings with a few teensy tiny hints to McQueen's house codes. Sarah Burton has now taken hold of the McQ ship to steer it into a new era, where the collection would slide up the scale, closer to the mainline and a four storey McQ store set to open in London will galvanise that shift.

People on the livestream, who thought they were tuning into a proper Alexander McQueen show would be forgiven for thinking this was slightly minimal for a mainline McQueen show, when in fact this was actually a stellar McQ collection. I was well and truly floored when I saw the clothes on the rack and the collection pretty much had me when I saw McMenamy, looking hauntingly beautiful from very angle.

The final three looks with their nipped in waists and hard-edged delicacy were already a million steps up from what McQ had offered previously. If the main Alexander McQueen is about as close to haute couture as can be expected in a ready to wear line, then McQ surely had to follow suit to present itself as a collection that takes those fantastical elements and tone them down for the reality of daily wear. There wasn't a checked shirt or parka jacket in sight and yet the distinction between the two lines is testament to how intricate and artisinal Sarah Burton's work is for the mainline. McQ's clothes still looked exquisitely made but neither were they the magnificent feats of intense labour that Burton pours into say a ruffled dress made up of hundreds of circular hand massaged chiffon. For the new customer that has recently been made aware of Alexander McQueen as a brand, due to last year's festivities, McQ will present itself as a better opportunity to be within touching distance of "proper" McQueen.

Let's talk about THAT hair first. I'm not the best at covering beauty and hair backstage and I was definitely trying to pick up tips from the hordes hair and beauty journos. Overhearing their convo with Guido Palau, who created this incredible feat of hair manipulation, I gleaned that the look was supposed to be an exaggerated 1940s hair roll, made up of a giant hair doughnut with the model's real hair pulled up over it, which looked like a painful process. I did want to tap Guido's shoulder and say "Hey, you remember me? You didn't want to do my hair on that Gap Christmas ad campaign because you said it looked fine as it was and I had sad panda face all day because of that." That would be incredibly sad and dorky though so I resisted the temptation.

The boots were also an arduous process. Thigh high with dozens of eyelets, the lacing up took about three people per model to complete. They are incidentally the first pair of thigh highs that I've wanted in a long time, which I think has something to do with the shine of the leather and the brogue-like punched detailing.

When they practised the finale, which hopefully you'll get to see in its mighty glory once McQ put up the full video, I was pretty hysterical. That's when I started manically tweeting "Please, guys. Just watch this."

It was really hard not to overdose on shots of McMenamy and her closing look.

As for the rest of the collection, it ran the gamut from the pragmatic and slick military moss green coats and jackets to the fantasy of a tutu dress embroidered with flowers. Everything was waisted and tightened to the proportions that one expects from McQueen. The Black Watch tartan was more than a nod to the notorious Highland Rape collection and has actually featured in previous McQ collections but looks more polished here as a bustier dress over a lace top or as a dramatic flared out frock coat. The menswear was perhaps slightly erring on the more casual side when compared with the womenswear but that didn't lessen the direction of the show which was WWII military in spirit to begin with and then darkened into a tangible woodland fantasy where burgandy velvet devoré with leaf motifs, a rainbow cornucopia of fabric flowers and cut silk and knots of silk made to look like moss growing on a rock all take over.

The finale, as some of you will have seen, featured McMenamy emerging on to the dried leaf covered catwalk and standing there, illuminated like a Titania-esque statue with leaves falling from above. She then looks up bewildered and lost and finds nestled under the leaves, a rope that guides her to a dramatic reveal of a woodland scene and into a curious looking hut.

Then there's an unexpected blaring of techno from this hidden club, to which we were all invited in to (provided you can elbow your way in through the throng of guests) afterwards for a drink or two with McMenamy revelling in all the photo snapping and looking like she owned this joint called the Core Club. According to the receipts plastered all over the walls, there are a ton of lifetime members, perhaps an allusion to the lifelong dedicated fans of Alexander McQueen, both brand and person. That's a Core Club that you can happily sign me up to.

Another Level

2012-02-19T08:35:31+00:00

I didn't really want to title this post with a naff band name from the early noughties that covered Silk tracks and called it their own, but all I could really say yesterday, over and who again was "That was AnOther Level!!!" I am of course speaking in reference to Simone Rocha, which in amongst a slew of brilliant things I saw yesterday, did manage to surpass the rest just because it was her on-schedule debut (discounting her shows with Fashion East) and quite literally took everyone's breath away. There was a rollercoaster giddiness felt after the show because you were so excited to witness the rise of yet another London duckling that only added to the hub-hub over LFW (I've just added yet another shoutout of "LFW is so great" to the chorus of articles in the latest isssue of Pop).

It was somewhat of an inevitability. Her off-schedule show had people in raptures and forevermore, the contrast between white lace trapped in kinky clear PVC stamped Rocha as someone who knows a thing or two about texture games. She didn't disappoint for her A/W 12-3 collection and refined her aesthetic even more, so much so that her MA collection seemed like a distant memory. You forget, that she's only really been four seasons in. She upped the tactability factor by looking at tribes of Papua New Guinea and then 1930s street urchin children of her native Dublin. I'm also reminded of Irish photographer Niall O'Brien's Good Rats series that depics street tribes at their most quiet and strangely beautiful. It's this mix of regal and untamed that underscores the collection. Slick mirror leather is the hard counterpart to the soft fluffy wool knit collar. A spotty print hide or sheeny shiny black ponyskin has a wildness to it that is coaxed back to elegance in a boxy oversized coat. PVC gets an burst of tufted yarns that could be likened to Papupa New Guinea tribal costume. The ladylike connotations of Melton and Linton tweed (oft used by Chanel) gets a layering of tulle to form a barrier of refinement. It's as if Rocha knows exactly when materials start looking cliched and banal and has the ability to stop them from doing so, with the wave of her texture-driven magic wand.

It's this precise knack for contrast and balance that got female hearts racing in the audience. I came away wanting to dress head to toe and submerse myself completely in Rocha's work. That's a hard feat for someone who craves the mix n' match.

In the shoe department, Rocha has long displayed a maturity that is beyond her years. The idea of working perspex into a brogue has the potential for becoming a design classic, as recognisable as Hussein Chalayan's wooden table skirt or Issey Miyake's Pleats Please technique. Rocha went for a pure stable of flat brogues and pumps and the perspex became a thin accent embedded in the sole, shining in clear, lime or coral. With two pairs of Simone Rocha's already in the closet, it invariably means that I'll now have to go the whole hog and continue that tradition with this season. That's no hardship considering the choice at hand.

Postled

2012-02-18T08:51:08+00:00

Why do these pics look a WHOLE lot better than normal? Because Shini of Park and Cube waved her magic Photoshop wand over them and did something awesome to them. In reality, my skin isn't all luminous and fresh, having come off a flight from New York. My "mum smile" (thanks Community Channel) is concealing rabid hunger and an urge to pee, if I recall. Oh and of course, Somerset House isn't blurring into the background. In fact, it's thrusted in yer' face if you're there for London Fashion Week. There is a veritable buzz around the courtyards and day one is normally a bit of a sleeper.

The Central Saint Martins MA show was the first kick start to the week and whilst I'm ploughing on, dissecting the photos and waiting to see everyone's portfolios in March at the private view, I'll be on BBC Radio4's Woman's Hour on Monday, taking people through the process of seeing a student show and talking a bit about the blog. Exciting? Ok, only for me because it's WOMAN'S HOUR!!!!

Back to the luminous skin and lovely background though. The Grazia readers unanimously voted for the Leutton Postle outfit for me to wear on the first day of LFW. You chose well! This S/S 12 piece of knitwear from the duo Sam Leutton and Jenny Postle is a riot of texture that just keeps on giving, especially when you look up close. It was also appropriate given that both graduated from the esteemed CSM school and represented the newest batch of graduates to make an independent stand. I did have to make a few alterations though. The show shoes that the jumper came with are a little unsteady and with my botched up ankle (a suitcase fell on it in the airport - I totally styled it out when that happened), I went with my old faithful Pradas. As a few people pointed out on Twitter, it is slightly chilly in London so on went a Marni coat and a Uniqlo poloneck underneath. I've also double bagged it with a Smythson Cooper bag and an Issey Miyake "Bao Bao" tote.

Somerset House shots by Shini

A few detail, texture rich shots that I took this morning.

Occupied Thoughts

2012-02-17T08:50:27+00:00

>> Guerilla, flash-mob type fashion shows in any centralised fashion week locations are par for course. They are the perfect venues for parading your wares unannounced and holding people's attention (although it's not necessarily sustained). At the Lincoln Centre in New York, these parades are pretty much two a penny. Some good, some horrifically bad. Andrea Diodati, a NY-based artist/designer behind label Electric Lovelight, staged a mini Occupy protest a few days ago that got my attention. At least, enough to ask Diodati why she was doing this. She said she was protesting against the prohibitive costs of showing at fashion week as part of the struggle of an independent designer. Her point was a valid one and potent especially in New York, where you can basically buy your way on to the schedule, resulting in a three hundred and fifty plus show jammed schedule that no singular human being could or ever want to possibly cover in its entirity. Indie designers like Diodati may not get as raw a deal all over the world and LFW is about to begin where show sponsorship based on merit is very much alive and well but Occupy as a theme to link with fashion has definitely been at the forefront of my mind, especially when commentors during the August riots were rather disparaging towards me for even deigning to talk about fashion at a time when it seemed the least tactful to do so.

I was wondering when Occupy's movement in the political/economic world would find its way transplanting itself to fashion, an industry of inequality, that is so arbritary that frankly, I'm too bewildered to even question why things are, the way they are. Diodati's protest can all too easily lead you to go down the slippery road of drawing parallels between the Occupy movement and fashion, until you do wonder in amidst the throng of fashion weeks, is this fair? Well, this is THE fashion week to believe in meritocracy so this post isn't a sour bum note to begin London Fashion Week with, but rather one of optimisim at the level that Diodati's work exudes. Alright, it's all a little Meadham Kirchhoff-y, Keisuke Kanda-esque, Harajuku/dolly-kei. There'll be those that appreciate her work though and she probably doesn't need to wave a cardboard sign around the money-talks fashion stomping ground of Lincoln Centre to garner attention.