Katie Grand and Ben Cobb Kicked Off London Fashion Week With a Buzzy After-Party

If the first day of London Fashion Week was marked by plenty of party-ready looks—from the refined glamour of Standing Ground’s padded evening gowns to the exuberantly bedazzled ’90s-inspired dresses at Conner Ives—then it only stands to reason that it should end with the city’s fashion community raising a glass. And how better to shepherd the fashion flock into the grand halls of the Dorchester Hotel than to open up the little black book of super-stylist and Perfect magazine editor Katie Grand and the editor of ES Magazine (and menswear street style favorite) Ben Cobb?

Between the moneyed guests of the hotel, the Gen Z club kids you might spot in the pages of Perfect, and ES Magazine’s orbit of London’s intellectual glitterati, you’ll struggle to find a more eclectic guestlist this week—but that was all part of the fun. Joan Collins and her husband Percy Gibson rubbed shoulders with next-gen music stars like Coi Leray and Mahalia, while Lily James stopped by in a leather trench coat and a pearl choker by Vivienne Westwood, whose memorial service on Thursday served as a tribute to the designer’s lasting influence. The fashion set, meanwhile, was represented by the likes of Karen Elson, Alva Claire, and Bryanboy.

The event also served to inaugurate the newly refurbished interiors of the hotel, with the crowds breezing through the gilded black marble columns of the central “promenade,” ordering spicy margaritas over the gleaming Lalique crystal surface of the Artists’ Bar, or enjoying miniature slices of Beef Wellington and gougères in the plush, velvet-lined chairs of the historic Vesper Bar. Let the London Fashion Week festivities begin.