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Noir/Bllack Noir
Back in London after a few seasons in New York, Noir turns the stereotypes of
fair trade and environmentally sustainable clothing on their heads, with a
collection that's sexy, sinuous and supple. That's an alliterative way of
saying there was a lot of black leather and liquid satin. According to
designer Peter Ingwersen, the clothes are dyed in Swiss factories that clean
the water so thoroughly afterwards, it can be drunk. Cleverer still, these
clothes are really desirable. High-waisted leather-pencil skirts and
wasp-waisted coats set the vamp-meets-Chrissie Hynde tone but soften into
billowing strapless silk dresses and draped, gold-beaded chiffon tops.
Noir's tailoring is pretty hot, so maybe it doesn't need to try so hard to
be cool. Then again, it's fighting a lot of preconceptions.
Don't you hate spellings that make you look illiterate? Bllack is Noir's less
expensive sister - linguistically fascinating, given that in Norman times in
England, English was considered less sophisticated than French, and was
mainly spoken by the less well off. Chez Noir, plus ça change, as Norman
peasants didn't say. Bllack is a bit punky, a bit rock'n'roll. That means
studded T-shirts and leather treggings (yikes, that trend's bedding in),
drapy jersey T-shirt dresses, slashed, sequined blouson tops and silky duvet
coats: great pieces, surprisingly well done, with a nod to current
predilections for cropped trousers and harem pants. That's Jo Wood's
wardrobe sorted, then. LA
Charles Anastase
It takes time to absorb the aftershock of a collection that was hotly
anticipated but didn't deliver. Did you miss something with those ragged
picnic blanket dresses? Is there a deeply subversive message in the scrawls
painted on the models' white tights, beyond the usual, “Hey this is London,
aren't we wild?” riff. Were the ropes that were tied around some of the
suits a coded message about the noose of materialism?
Frankly it doesn't matter, because subversion needs to be a lot less obvious
than that these days if it's to be truly subversive. On the plus side,
Anastase knows how to throw together an eye-catching outfit - the pictures
look better than the clothes did close up. His challenge is to take that
vision and give us items that merit the high price tags. That Anastase has
taken that Olsen-twin-meets-East-End-girl eclecticism to heart is clear.
That's fine. It's OK too, to manufacture a kind of rough around the edges
DIY vibe for the catwalk. But the pieces need to be individually beautiful.
There's nothing wrong with an overtly synthetic, animal-print fake-fur
jacket either. But when you can get the same kind of kitsch on the high
street for a fraction of the Anastase cost, there's less and less here that
adds up. LA
Unique, Topshop
At times, Topshop's Unique collection felt like running through a check list
of Eighties trends, even if the press release claimed that the show had more
to do with intergalactic adventures. So yes to the DayGlo boots, the
obligatory yellow-splattered jumpsuit was present and correct, not to forget
the ombre shading, exaggerated shoulders (rather than ones that had risen to
life with the help of extra padding) and a smattering of dog chains. Still,
lest one forget, these are clothes that are being sold for remarkably less
than their designer counterparts on the London Fashion Week schedule. And,
as hard-to-grapple with trends go (or at least for anyone over the age of
Pixie Geldof and Daisy Lowe, who rocked up front row) this androgynous
silhouette that Unique has been pushing for the past few seasons had at
least reached a conclusion of sorts. Aside from the fact that it felt less
derivative of other design influences, it also boasted more substantial
pieces than summer's overload of parachute silk jumpsuits. Metallic
leathers, which were fused, slashed and twisted, were interesting, as were
grey trench coats with exaggerated yokes and pleating tucks on sleeves that
created a striking 3-D effect. So too was the jolt of a chartreuse knitted
dress. CA
Vivienne Westwood Red Label
How time mellows. In days of yore Vivienne Westwood was the warrior queen of
anarchy. Spool forward 30-odd years and Vivienne Westwood Red Label - a
defusion of the main line that she still shows in Paris - is stuffed with
clothes that should please most sensible women. Perhaps it's because the
Westwood iconography - the bustier, the wasp waist, the looped up,
shades-of-Boudicca skirts - is so well established that she no longer feels
the need, with Red Label at any rate, to produce bombastic visions. Indeed
she has even confessed that she doesn't design this collection, her team
does. So it's not groundbreaking but it is wearable. The range includes
terrific individual items: tailored knits, trenches, cowl-fronted dresses
cut on the bias, drape-fronted jackets, a fabulous stiletto version of her
buffalo boots, plus the holy grail of outfits: the pinstripe skirt suit that
really would take you from office to date and even back to his place.
Westwood's followers - from Jo Wood, who was modelling, to Girls Aloud's
Nicola Roberts, who was in the front row in one of Westwood's
waist-whittling dresses, to Siouxsie Sioux, a few seats down, in front of
Jaime Winstone, and David Walliams (looking to play a transvestite again?) -
are testament to the wide appeal of her clothes. Selling out? Just selling,
more like. LA
Margaret Howell
Even the most hyped designers, the ones regularly touted as “The Next Big
Thing” are never a guarantee of a stellar turn out from the fashion press.
And yet, Margaret Howell always manages to reel them in. With no big
advertising budgets to speak of and clothes that err on the distinctly
unshowy side, other designers must wonder how they too could bottle her
appeal.
It's a particular blend of the understated which attracts fashion editors in
their droves each season: mannish, slouchy suiting in fine wools, check
shirting, drop-waist dresses in dirgy (for which read intellectual) colours,
models with variations on Bloomsbury updos that hip fashion bibles always
ape and, for winter at least, a healthy dose of herringbone tweed. While
Saturday's show was charming enough, this clearly wasn't a lesson in how to
progress during an economic downturn: especially when a lot of the pinstripe
grandad tops, the gauzy, grey skirts, the oversized cardis and decorative
ruffs on tops and dresses looked like pricer examples from the Toast
catalogue. Nautical stripes, a fashion perennial, are all good and well, but
nothing that one can't find in Uniqlo. CA
Betty Jackson
Blame it on the global recession, but next winter is fast shaping up to be the
season to cosy up. If John Rocha played out his cocooning indulgence on
Saturday, then Jackson was another to welcome the return of the oversized
and slightly voluminous. Jackson went one better though by adding
interesting textures - thick wools, touchy-feely mohair and some shearling -
in a jolting Fifties colour palette of baby blue, sherbet lemon and dirty
pinks, instead of typically wintery (and bland) shades of taupe and grey.
She also rather skilfully juxtaposed different fabrics: the wools were
employed to toughen up the vintage-feel, silk floral prints, while shiny
velvet skirts with pintucks on side panels were teamed with shocking-bright
felt ruffles.
What was odd was that as a champion of real women with normal-sized bodies
(who could have missed Victoria Wood, Dawn French and Lorraine Kelly on the
front row?) some of those drawstring trousers, high-waisted skirts and
slouchy shape coats were not the easiest items to pull off, even for the
models. Yet, despite a few awkward shapes, there were some stand-out pieces,
notably a caramel Fifties-style pencil-skirt dress with rounded neck,
shoulders and bracelet sleeves as well as those washed-out Fifties floral
dresses, most notably one that was cinched with a red suede belt. CA
