Financial Times Europe - 20.02.2020

Thursday20 February 2020 ★ FINANCIAL TIMES 5

Britain is sick of Brexit and, much like
Boris Johnson’s newly refreshed cabinet,
the British fashion industry is now look-
ing ahead.
A joyful optimism permeated many
of the collections at London Fashion
Week, which drew to a close at a candle-
lit crypt in Farringdon on Tuesday after-
noon, where Princess Anne presented
the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British
Design to jewellery designer Rosh
Mahtani of Alighieri. (Europe’s compet-
ing fashion weeks may have the mega-
brands, but London has its royals.)
“Optimistic” and “nouveau chic” were
the terms Jonathan Anderson used to
describe his utumn/winter 2020 coll-a
ection, outstanding in its volumes and
the technical means used to accomplish
them. The Irish designer was thinking
back to “a moment in the1920s when
everything resurged, when everything
kind of rebounded”, and also what it
means for women to occupy space.
(Something Molly Goddard also excels
in, with her floating tulle dresses.) He
gave them the means to have it, cutting
large leather lapels on to supersized
swing coats and knitting enormous pom-
pom-shaped dresses in the round.
Anderson has a way of making hum-
ble materials appear precious. Strips of
cellophane added a romantic glimmer
to shoulders and sleeves of otherwise
simple black dresses, and check coats
and offered a spongy contrast to a stun-
ning silver dress whose horizontal fringe
was pressed sideways so that it spun,
car-wash-like, as the model moved.
Emilia Wickstead and Erdem Morali-
oglu were also looking to the 1920s, but
their interpretations were more literal.
The latter has been working closely with
curator Robin Muir on the upcoming
Cecil Beaton exhibition at London’s
National Portrait Gallery, and the soci-

After the puritanical

restraint of New York, the

sexy, colourful collections

unveiled in London were a

welcome jolt of joy

Designer Alessandro

Michele takes the fashion

crowd behind the seams —

and the effect was magical

Fashion is full of strange, archaic rituals.
For designers, there is the ritual of mak-
ing and presenting fashion collections
six months before they’ll ever be bought
or worn; for journalists, the ritual of
viewing and reporting on those collec-
tions, which require the toil of hundreds
of models, stylists, dressers and
make-up artists, most of whom do their
work unobserved. Those collections are
shown, hour after hour, season after
season, year after year, in a four-week
stretch across New York, London, Milan
and Paris — a dizzying cycle of, wash,
rinse, repeat.
“We share the same job,” Gucci’s Ales-
sandro Michele told a room of bemused
reporters following his show at the com-
pany’s campus-like headquarters. It was
Wednesday, the opening day of Milan
Fashion Week, and most had taken
early flights in from London. He’s been
working in fashion for 25 years, he said,
and at the end of a fashion show, he’s
deeply tired. “And I think that your role
is also tiring, because in a circular way
you travel from place to place, to find
the right words, to look for visions.”
And so he decided to swap places with
us journalists, to show us not just the fin-
ished product but also the linings and

diversity activist Bethann Hardison and

actress Dakota Johnson paid her com-

pliments to the designer.

If only the clothes had been as mov-

ing. Michele said he has been amassing

an archive of vintage children’s clothes

from the 1930s, ’40s and ’70s, many of

them English school clothes. He trans-

lated their proportions, their doll-like

perfection and sense of play into

Wednesday’s collection, dressing mod-

els in red and black toggle coats

shrunken into jackets with three-

quarter sleeves, and grey flannel school

dresses that looked as if they’d been long

outgrown. There were some new ele-

ments here, for sure — but the vintage-

eclectic, everything-but-the-kitchen-

sink aesthetic that Michele brought to

Gucci in 2015 has come to feel a bit

tired, faded.

Gucci is the world’s third-largest lux-

ury fashion brand after Louis Vuitton

and Chanel, responsible for 80 per cent

of parent company Kering’s profits. Its

annual revenue is on track to surpass

€10bn for the first time this year, and

Michele is under tremendous pressure

to persuade customers to fill their clos-

ets with yet more Gucci loafers, blazers

and belts. Michele has sometimes pon-

dered aloud to journalists the possibility

of a future career outside of fashion but

confessed Wednesday that he remains

under its spell. “Somebody told me

when I’m 45, I’ll do something else,” he

said. “I’m 48 and I’ve not yet found

something else.” One hopes he never

will. But a little newness wouldn’t hurt.

gle-shaped paneling on satin patchwork

coats and oxford shirts, some layered

under bejewelled and gel-injected har-

nesses. Kane does his own thing, and he

does it well.

A decade after launch, Victoria Beck-

ham is still defining what her “thing” is.

Her reputation as a ready-to-wear

designer is now cemented, but her busi-

ness remains on shaky ground. Like

other designers ofher generation, she is

seeing sales and profits tumble as

department stores cut back. Revenues

for the 2018 financial year dropped 16

per cent to £35.1m year-on-year as pre-

tax losses widened from £10.3m to

£12.2m.

She designs perfectly good day

clothes, as seen in this season’s seduc-

tively roomy wool coats and sliced-and-

slashed knits over velvet culottes. But

with jackets and dresses priced between

£1,000-£1,500, she’s competing with

much bigger brands with proportionally

bigger marketing budgets. Beckham

says the direct-to-consumer beauty

range she launched in September is

doing “exceptionally well”. Therein may

lie the potential, commercially at least.

Not every collection leaned optimis-

tic. Ruffled Victorian dresses of funereal

black featured at Simone Rocha and

Preen. Rejina Pyo, who picked up the

Emerging Designer of the Year trophy at

December’s Fashion Awards, was feel-

ing deeply affected by the current cli-

mate — global warming, coronavirus,

Brexit — and rinsed her square-necked

buttoned jackets and high-waisted pen-

cil skirts in brown, bronze and swamp

green. The dank, dilapidated railway

bridge that served as the show venue

added to the drippy mood. These were

clothes for protest and solidarity, she

said — not for standing out in a crowd.

“It just feels so backwards, what’s

happening in America, Trump, climate

change, the coronavirus, the fires in

Australia,” she said. “I wanted to show

that strong mood and women who are

empowered and ready to mash things,

but still in the elegant, beautiful, femi-

nine way.” It’s a fitting mantra for the

season.

seams. Behind panes of glass on a

revolving circular platform, Michele’s

own team of grey-suited dressers, hair-

stylists and make-up artists moved as if

preparing for a show backstage. Sixty

looks hung from rails marked with

numbers and the names of models such

as Elaine, Li and Delphi, who stepped

out of white cotton robes and into lacy

Gone with the Wind-esque ball gowns,

severe Quaker coats and hats, and baby-

doll dresses fastened under black

leather harnesses. Just as his teams were

on display for us, so we were on display

for them.

The effect was magic. Powerful. The

applause at the end of the show was

thunderous. Inside the real backstage

after the show, dressers wiped tears

from their faces as Gucci chief executive

Marco Bizzarri snapped a photo with

ety photographer’s tinfoil and graphic

backgrounds found their way on to sil-

ver foil evening dresses and checker-

board coats and skirts. So too did some

of the clothes Beaton’s subjects wore,

including the drooping black vinyl coat

that opened the show.

Wickstead and Moralioglu are both

captivated by history and their collec-

tions sometimes lean more towards

period costume than ready-to-wear, but

Gucci sales have more than

doubled under Michele

Revenues (bn)





      

Alessandro Michele

takes over as

creative director

Source: Bloomberg

Clockwise from left: JW Anderson AW20; Christopher Kane; Preen by Thornton Bregazzi; Rejina Pyo; Erdem; Victoria Beckham; Burberry Jason Llod-Evans—

FASHION

Lauren

Indvik

LO N D O N FA S H I O N W E E K

Milan AW20:Gucci

A decade after launch,

Victoria Beckham

is still defining what

her ‘thing’ is

a deft mix of textures and finishes kept

things fresh in both cases.

History has been weighing on Ricca-

rdo Tisci at Burberry, whose collections

have become so heavily confined to the

brand guardrails as to feel static. Trench

coats, heritage check, corduroy-collared

quilted coats — they weren’t just refer-

enced in the collection, theywerethe col-

lection. It’s time to move on. Tisci’s best

work for Burberry has been his tailoring

and his eveningwear, two categories he

introduced to the brand. He would do

well to work with a freer hand.

Christopher Kane is free of suchcon-

straints. His spring/summer 2019 More

Joy collection was a watershed moment,

coming on the heels of his company’s

split from Kering and reminding audi-

ences of the joy of sex at the height of

#MeToo. (It also became the basis of a

successful line of logo-embossed merch

that includes £85 T-shirts, iPhone cases

and a vibrator.)

This season’s collection, dubbed

Naturotica, began with “saucy under-

wear” and the story of Adam and Eve,

which got him thinking about the all-

watching eye of God and “a love triangle

between man, woman and nature”, he

said. Scant bras and thongs were the

starting point for the lacy lingerie tops

of pleated party dresses and the trian-

Designers say goodbye to Brexit