London: Mark Fast, Mary Katrantzou, Fashion East, Vauxhall Fashion Scout Fall 2009
Everywhere I’ve been seeing this intense, starkly angular, raven-haired woman, and wondering, how do I know that face? What magazine does she edit, again? And it’s only on the last day of London Fashion Week that I realize: duh. Erin O’Connor.
You’ll have to excuse me but, in this city, at least in this week, everyone looks either famous or almost so. Kirkwood heels, insanely kinky getups and boldly MAC’d-up faces appear at every South Kensington streetlight. And why not? If you look the part, London seems to say, you might as well play it.
That said, there’ve been bonafide It girls hanging out all week, so here, I’ll give you three. First, the ubiquitous rock heiresses Peaches and Pixie Geldof (the former a popular front-rower; the latter a model at PPQ and Luella). Second, and the one to watch, is new downtown darling Lissy Trullie (musician, party girl, also a Luella model). Last but not least? The Irish pop star Roisin Murphy, hardly recognizable how that she’s left behind her Björk-level-of-crazy costumes (she actually wore black yesterday).
For the gossiping early birds on Day 5, there were bold new designs for new boldfaces at the 9 a.m. Mark Fast/Mary Katrantzou show. (Note to LFW organizers: next season? More of these back-to-back, 2-for-1 specials, please. We’ll think of it as a reversal of the dollars-to-pounds exchange rate.)
Fast, the 27-year-old native Winnipegger and knitwear genius, said he was inspired by a freak thunderstorm. To that effect, klieg lights flashed like lightning while the appropriately eerie strains of Bat for Lashes echoed through the tent. Models wore wet hair with their barely-there dresses, stitched and stretched out of silky microfibres and shot through with artfully placed holes.
Katrantzou’s opening model was the gorgeous Jourdan Dunn (a.k.a. new Naomi), with a major beehive and liquid liner brush-stroked around her eyes. Sixties influences were felt throughout, lending a retro-futuristic vibe to her signature graphics, which look like digitized landscapes in old sci-fi video games. The jewellery was crazy cool, too, all outsize geometric shapes strung together in silver.
One of the most sought-after tickets at LFW is for Fashion East: a perennial next-big-thing harbinger, supporting and showcasing three future stars every year. This season? Wouldn’t you know! It was a trio of It girl designers: Natascha Stolle, Maria Francesca Pepe and Holly Fulton. (With Peaches and Roisin in the front row, naturally.)
Fashion East director and so-called “fairy godmother” Lulu Kennedy was played to hilarity by her drag queen pal Jonny Woo, who introduced each designer to the restaurant-turned-runway at hip bistro Quaglino’s. Favourite line: “They say fashion and food don’t go together… Remember the Fashion Cafe? I don’t.”
Stolle’s show was a lesson in layering, taking cues from MJ (all those slouchy knit hats!) and YSL (well-draped grey marl). Pepe reimagined black blazers as something defiantly un-buttoned up (one model’s nipple slipped from under an asymmetrical lapel). But Fulton’s series of plastic-appliquéd robot rockers was my favourite—not because I’d wear the pop-bright, glossy, futuristic dresses, but because the so-apropos Crystal Castles soundtrack reminded me of the Toronto scene. Aww.
If Fashion East is the future of LFW, then Vauxhall Fashion Scout might be the future of Fashion East. Of the threesome that showed, Craig Lawrence is the name to Google. If you’re a fan of his loopy, Bubblicious-hued creations, order his limited-edition cover of AnOther Magazine, with Tilda Swinton wearing his pink ribbon dress, from Selfridges.com. If not, buy the regular one on stands, as she’s wearing the aforementioned Mark Fast.
I didn’t venture back to Quaglino’s for the scenefest that is House of Holland, but I saw plenty of the Agyness-approved attire at another House… the House of Blueeyes. Founded by punkster and self-described superstylist Johnny Blue Eyes (not real name, presumably) and opened last year (Kate Moss walked in their first show), it’s some sort of clothing shop and collaborative. And the “show”? Rather, a bizarre bash on London’s grimy-slash-gentrified eastern edge with a hardcore burlesque spectacle of a runway show. It was anti-fashion at its most stereotypically anarchic. The clothes were indescribably terrible, so I watched the people, the ones who dress like they want to be watched.
Somehow I found the only other Canadian, uncostumed girls in the room and one of them whispered something about Vivienne Westwood being there. An Australian photographer pointed out some old gent he thought was a former Sex Pistol. I spied Katie Grand—the former POP editor, now founder of LOVE, the magazine about “fashion and fame”—sipping on something tropical, a few feet away. Wait, then again, would Katie Grand wear all black? And who cares, anyway? In London these days, fashion is fame.
ALL FALL 2009
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