Photo: Indigital.tv1/4Meadham Kirchhoff, Spring 2014I remember feeling that maybe I’d tumbled down some fairy-tale rabbit hole and into a wonderland of Rococo delights during this show. The fashion was totally otherworldly and decadent—if Marie Antoinette were around today and living in trendy East London, she’d surely have her fill here—but also laced with a cheeky punk attitude that was so right, and so Meadham Kirchhoff. I’m still kicking myself for not getting one of the corseted denim jackets!
Photo: Indigital.tv2/4Hood By Air, Fall 2014Shayne Oliver has always been way ahead of his time, and I feel like this was the show that made the fashion world sit up and pay attention. It was billed as a menswear collectsion, but, of course, Oliver has never been one for gender conformity. A woman opened the show and all of the models—male/female/trans—had hair extensions trailing down the back of their Hood By Air leather trenchcoats and logo tees. It was just the right way to build up to the show’s terrific finale, when a troupe of dancers stormed out dressed in the brand’s bondage denim, whipping their colored wigs back and forth.
Photo: firstVIEW3/4Preen, Spring 2003As someone who grew up stalking the stalls of Portobello Market every single Saturday morning, Preen will always have a special place in my heart. I remember stumbling upon the label’s little boutique under the Westway flyover just by the market in the late ’90s and being totally spellbound by all of the deconstructed wares. I think designers Justin Thornton and Thea Bregazzi were only making one-of-kind pieces back then. So when I landed my first gig as a features assistant for the magazine of one of the London papers several years later, I quickly made friends with the girls in the fashion department expressly to sniff out the location of the next Preen show. There were huge disco balls swinging from the ceiling and an insane soundtrack of roaring lions playing as I snuck into the abandoned warehouse where the show took place. But it was the cool, unexpected sway of the clothes—somewhere between tender and tough—that struck me the most. Tank tops that sprouted peplum tutus, plaid shirts that hung off the body like backpacks, Ziggy Stardust–style silver pants that were layered under trailing tulle halter tops—it was everything I wanted to wear.
Photo: Indigital.tv4/4Louise Gray, Fall 2011The Scottish designer Louise Gray racked up many great shows in her short three-year run on the London Fashion Week circuit, but her Fall 2011 collectsion stands out in my mind, mostly because it typified her madcap, life-affirming approach to fashion. Gray had a way with loading up seemingly disparate prints and patterns that was totally genius—traditional plaids were shot with crazy Pop Art motifs, then peppered with gigantic polka dots. In fact, the set itself was like something out of a Yayoi Kusama installation—even the models’ faces were dotted with colorful neon spots. And no one managed to make that creative chaos look more uncomplicated and easy than she did. Each time she came out to take her bow after a show, she’d be wearing a perfectly composed yet insanely colorful outfit.
