London Fashion Week Day 1

The show started with a live jazz band, raising expectations, especially as it was the second show to officially launch London Fashion Week this morning. Sadly, the show did not serve well at all. Charles took a very safe route of using girlie pastels on loose flirty dresses with fluid shapes. Printed kaftans and bandeau dresses were prominent in the collection. Her more statement pieces included a sequin orange knee length loose fitted dress styled with a black top hat, followed by a three piece monochrome skirt suit. The show was very predictable and was a very disappointing way to start London Fashion Week, where we expect innovation and creativity.

14/9/08 16:00

Horace

The Horace show brought a really well put together collection, including beautiful high waisted skirts and trousers in smoky charcoal and blacks teamed with tops in soft fluid fabrics. There was a strong reference to the 80s grunge, which was prevalent in the autumn/winter 2008 shows. Horace is definitely a label to look out for and could be the British equivalent of Alexander Wang.

14/9/08 17:00

Theatre De la Mode

After waiting for a long time for the 'show' to begin, the crowds of fashionista’s were left disappointed by the Theatre de la Mode show. Not only where we left waiting, there was no show after all. Instead the designers had chosen to create a short video clip of models in a choreographed artistic piece wearing the clothes. Although I am sure the intention was to do something different and entertaining, in actual fact the video clip only distracted people from the clothes. Like Horace, they decided to use a very muted dark palette of dark grey, black, midnight blues and cream.

14/9/08 20:00

Peter Jensen

The words that best describes Peter Jensen’s show are wearable and simple. Citing his influence as Jodie Foster in ‘The Silence of the Lamb’, Jensen produced a strong reference to eighties silhouettes and tailoring. The collection used a fresh colour palette of the muted greys and blues prevalent last week in New York. However, unlike many of the shows this week, Jensen was not afraid to use colour, showcasing beautiful boxy cropped jackets and high waisted red leopard print skirts. The only problem was that it fragmented the show so much that the audience was left questioning where the sudden burst of red came from. The beginning of the show appealed to a practical woman on the run with sporty more practical silhouettes such as stripe T-shirt dresses and twinsets and grey sweats, while the rest of the collection was more feminine, strong and sexy with dresses nipped at the waist, forties flower-print and floral bustier dresses and high-waist trousers. Overall Jensen created a pretty collection but did not produce anything new or exciting.