See Lisa Armstrong's video review of Christopher Kane

Are hobble skirts a good idea? From a practical point of view, obviously not. That would be one of the reasons why women dumped them during the First World War, wilful immobility being a foolish impediment in times of danger.

From another point of view, hobble skirts are utterly brilliant because they make great pictures. They are probably sexy, too, in a not entirely healthy tie-me-up-and-torture-me way. So gird your loins for lots of editorial spreads featuring the constricting tube dresses of Marios Schwab next season. While you are at it you might as well girdle them too, should you feel the urge to wear one, because when it comes to bumps, curves and what the Black Eyed Peas so eloquently refer to as “lovely lady lumps” in one of their songs, these clothes would display not only every lump, hump and early onset of cellulite but a few kidney stones into the bargain.

Schwab is part of the new generation of British designers (he is part-Austrian, part-Greek, but you know what I mean) who are making London Fashion Week a hot ticket again. From the start (all of two years ago) he has made sexually out-there dressing his trademark. Along with Christopher Kane he brought back body-conscious clothes.

Multimedia

• Christopher Kane at LFW

• Betty Jackson at LFW

18 trends at London Fashion Week

A peek at the hottest swag bags, the front-row attendees and the trends and gossip emerging from London Fashion Week

Multimedia

• Lisa Armstrong's video review of Christopher Kane

• Backstage at Ossie Clark

• Video: Backstage at Betty Jackson

Hardly anyone could wear it in real life but in unreal life (fashion spreads and MTV) it caused a sensation. Now New York has its own version in the relaunched and much hyped Hervé Léger collection that had its debut last week. So Schwab had to move on and find something equally arresting. What he has discovered is a scissoring technique that looked like moth holes on the first few tube dresses that came down the catwalk. But by the finale these had metamorphosed into intricate mazes — a sort of moth lace. The most beautiful dresses featured cut-out panels trimmed with metal work and topped with cropped, bolero trenchcoats. It exuded a kind of back-alley glamour. If the models hadn’t moved like mummies in them you could almost have called it sporty chic.

Like Schwab, Kane is carrying the weight of expectations about London Fashion Week on his shoulders. And Kane also had some good ideas: his cableknit jumper dresses, calf-length and embellished with chunky sequin necklaces, were luxurious and cool looking. The way that he veiled the saucer-sized plastic sequins on his chiffon tunic dresses with yet more layers of chiffon was pretty and accomplished. But at times their slouchy easiness collapsed into an exhausted-looking droop. Perhaps February is too soon after the September and October shows for designers to have formed a fresh pointof view.

Betty Jackson at least had fresh colour mixes: heather with mustard, petrol blue and red — and for the most part they worked. There were lots of wearable clothes, some welcome: kimono-style belted coats, leather short-sleeved tunic dresses over pullovers, the knickers with Jane Seymour on them.Some were less welcome, such as the shiny ski pants. But hey, the models could walk. Consider that progress.

Catwalk videos timesonline.co.uk/fashion

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