LONDON FASHION WEEK: SPRING/SUMMER 2010

 

New York Fashion Week ended on Thursday but runway shows and presentations are still happening across the pond.

 

London - London Fashion Week is celebrating its 25th anniversary, which kicked off on Friday. Many British designers are showing this week--from Daneille Scutt to Caroline Charles and Mark Fast to Margaret Howell. And designers have also expressed their thoughts on why London Fashion Week "has built a reputation for outstandingly original fashion."  Caroline Charles said, "London fashion supports a wider and younger group of designers than other cities." And Bora Aksu added, "This is the only city where non-cliché talent can feel at home. London is not about trends or big cooperations. It's about individual designers who have their own voice and have their own design language." With that said, here's a quick look at few shows from Saturday. 

 

Mark Fast

 

 

 

Mark Fast described the "Mark Fast woman" as someone "who knows exactly what she wants" and who takes risk. It also appeared that the designer was taking risks too as he added three plus-size models in his runway show. "A lot of people think it's not appropriate to use plus-size models," he said. "But I met these girls and I loved their charisma. They're just jewels, you know?" (Not everyone agreed with Fast as his show's stylist quit over the designer's insistence to add plus-size models.) I have to say the ladies, who I wouldn't even consider "plus sizes", were pretty hot in their tight fitting mini-dresses, showing the waif-like models that there's room for different physiques on the runway.

 

Osman Yousefzada

 

 

 

It was nothing but love for the color white at Osman Yousefzada's spring/summer 2010 show as every model walking down the runway wore white pieces with gold accents included in some of the designs. Osman admitted he has always wanted to do an all-white collection saying, "White leaves you nothing to hide behind." There really wasn't anything remarkable with the collection, and even worse there was only one piece I could see Cate Blanchett, who is Osman's ideal customer, wearing and it's the design pictured on the bottom right. That is if she had nothing else to wear on the red carpet.

 

Danielle Scutt

 

 

 

Danielle Scutt included "prints, fabrics and cut" as her inspirations for her spring/summer 2010 collection and she lived up to it on her runway show. Every piece had either all or two of her inspirations but it was the prints in polka dots and black squiggles that are suggestive of the work of artist Zandra Rhodes that stole the show. Models wore swirly hairpieces on top of their heads, which made the colorful show even that more deliciously fun.

 

Margaret Howell

 

 

 

Margaret Howell wasn't playing around when she said her inspiration for her spring/summer 2010 collection was "rolled-up sleeves and trouser bottoms, linen socks, red and khaki." Khaki was definitely the main color used throughout her show, from blazers to socks and trench coats to trousers. The color palette and the details Howell went for gave her collection a nautical theme, which is perfect for the gloomy weather London normally experiences year round. There was also subtlety to her designs that made her collection stand out from the other shows on Saturday. 

 

 

Kristina Bustos

[Story/Images via London Fashion Week; Also via Style]