London Fashion Week- taking place from Friday 15th to Tuesday 19th September 2023 -showcased both menswear and womenswear, as a hybrid digital and physical event. Hosted by British Fashion Council the bi-annual event provides a platform for fashion designers to share their vision through collections, films, podcasts, conversations, articles and galleries and acknowledges the necessity to look for the opportunity to drive change, collaborate and innovate in ways that will establish long-term benefits, develop sustainable business models and boost the industry’s economic and social power. Let’s check out a few highlights of the ongoing fashion week -:
Burberry
British fashion brand Burberry, established in 1856, passed the creative baton to Daniel Lee in mid-2022. For SS24 at London Fashion Week Lee modernised the heritage fashion label with a youthful and contemporary vibe. The showing, which took place under a tent pitched in the park at Highbury Fields, had green park benches and quilts, which made the guests curious about the runway show’s theme. Would green be the new Burberry blue? Per Vogue: “…here were lean, knee-length, low-belted silhouettes for city life with precisely-judged asymmetric lapels and minimal epaulettes applied across womenswear and menswear… The same feel carried through into the men’s tailoring: double-breasted two-piece tonic suits…” That said, the last looks were dedicated to English summer flowers and fruits… ending with a bare chested male model closing the show.
JW Anderson
One of the fashion industry’s most acclaimed British designers, Jonathan Anderson — the eponymous creative director of luxury fashion brand JW Anderson — gave us a glimpse into his madcap world at London Fashion Week. JW Anderson Spring Summer 2024 began with a look that guests just couldn’t get hold of: was the hoodie and shorts crafted with laminated cotton? Or a new fabrication? Hell, it was plasticine, moulded into and shaded to perfection. Wearable? No, but a nostalgic reminder of where creativity began for just about all of us!! Per British Vogue: “…for SS24 he was focused on ‘not modernity or minimalism’, but ‘finding a newness’ and ‘blowing something up’. Classic MA1 bomber jackets were blown up to voluminous proportions, and protruded with feathers from arm holes and zippers. Simple T-shirts and trousers were imagined in a shiny padded fabric… and spaghetti strap summer dresses and loafers were reworked as ‘total knit looks’ in a tactile weave.”
Molly Goddard
Since launching her eponymous label in 2014, London-based fashion designer Molly Goddard has dressed celebrities ranging from Rihanna to Agyness Deyn. Working in the divide between between maximalism and constraint, the fashion designer’s work with transparency, fabric manipulation, and volume is admirable and her exploration of textile art such as hand-smocking and shirring has won her a number of awards. For Spring Summer 2024 Goddard focused on what lies beneath i.e. corsetry, boning, internal zips, crinolines and vintage underwear. The show won critical acclaim, with Vogue reviewing it as “…trademark tulle skirts were teamed with loosely corseted tops whose sheerness exposed the geography of boning and corsetry… A precise excavation of the deeply familiar but also overlooked, this was a quietly masterful collection…”
Jasmeen Dugal is Associate Editor at FashionABC, contributing her insights on fashion, technology, and sustainability. She brings with herself more than two decades of editorial experience, working for national newspapers and luxury magazines in India.
Jasmeen Dugal has worked with exchange4media as a senior writer contributing articles on the country’s advertising and marketing movements, and then with Condenast India as Net Editor where she helmed Vogue India’s official website in terms of design, layout and daily content. Besides this, she is also an entrepreneur running her own luxury portal, Explosivefashion, which highlights the latest in luxury fashion and hospitality.