He still has his knighthood, but Sir Philip Green has forfeited another prized bauble of social status: his place on the front row at London fashion week.
Green, who previously revelled in the photo opportunities provided by his Topshop catwalk show, was nowhere to be seen on Sunday afternoon. One imagines that whoever would have been responsible for recruiting the supermodel required to sit next to him breathed a sigh of relief when that announcement was made.
Topshop worked hard at making this an event that aligned it with ordinary people who wear high street clothes rather than the front row elite.
“See now buy now” may be revolutionising the fashion industry, but it is still largely an abstract concept for the consumer – or it was until Topshop, the spiritual home of instant retail gratification, tackled that head-on with a collection which was on sale at a pop-up shop at the end of the catwalk as soon as the show at Spitalfields Market ended.
A PVC minidress worn on the catwalk with bare legs and high-heeled fuchsia booties was hanging on a rail with a £295 price tag (this is Topshop Unique, the upscale sub-brand of Topshop, so don’t expect bargain-basement prices).
A blouse with jumpsuit-style D-ring fastenings in this fashion week’s hot shade of sugar pink, paired on the catwalk with a khaki miniskirt, was on sale for £115.
If the first remarkable thing about these clothes was that many were for sale immediately – though some will be held back for a second drop to freshen up the shop floor in November – the second point to note was that they did not conform to the outsider-chic, street-corner-sportswear aesthetic currently dominating fashion.
The sharp change in direction to a sexed-up, glamorous, straightforwardly dress-to-impress look was all the more interesting since it was Topshop Unique that did much to make the hoodies-and-tracksuit-bottoms look happen in the first place.
The programme notes had a more political tone than might have been expected, in the wake of the BHS scandal: “From the black hole of the recessionary seventies, an age of rocketing unemployment, burst a passionately tribal youth culture.”
On the mood board for this show were party dresses from London’s iconic 1980s clubs, a scene in which clubwear borrowed the jewel colours and fitted shapes of cocktailwear but added a punk spin with extra leg and wet-look shine. Extreme side partings and giant earrings completed the look.
The subversive side of British style was designer Jonny Coca’s theme for his second season at Mulberry. Coca took school uniform looks – striped blazers, pleated skirts, lunch boxes – and twisted them, with non-regulation hemlines and extracurricular accessories.
Floral dresses were made with the fabric inside out, so that the print had a thrift-store fade. A high-octane catwalk presentation – styled by Lotta Volkova, the industry’s of-the-moment creative – underscored Coca’s ambition to make Mulberry a force to be reckoned with again.
But Mulberry is fundamentally about handbags. The Cherwell – styled on a school lunch box, with a boxy shape and runaround zip – distilled the mood of the catwalk collection into a very appealing new bag with a distinctively Mulberry character.
Mulberry was not the only ambitious handbag brand at London fashion week, a fact made abundantly clear at this season’s epic Anya Hindmarch show. Hindmarch, who this week is moonlighting as a guest curator at Sotheby’s, having been selected as “an inspirational female British tastemaker”, staged a show that was almost Lagerfeld-esque in its elegant theatricality.
The show began with the audience seated on cube benches, the kind installed in galleries for watching video art installations, surrounding a raised circular stage. But when the show began, the stage lifted and hovered like a spaceship – or an Olafur Eliasson installation – above a sunken amphitheatre revealed hidden beneath from which models ascended via a spiral walkway.
There was a strong commercial message to the artistry of the mechanics. Well-thought-out construction – the right size of pockets in the right place, user-friendly fastenings, comfortable straps – are at the core of the Anya Hindmarch brand. As a fusion of aesthetics and engineering, this was a strong mission statement for a handbag label.
