London Fashion Week: Day four
Monday, Feb. 18
Noon
“I bet you he’s going to decamp to Paris,” a fashion writer says as we cram into a crowded elevator of top editors on our way to Christopher Kane’s buzzing show. He’s been a London Fashion Week highlight for three years now. But public interest in him is now on high, ever since PPR (the power conglomerate behind Alexander McQueen and Stella McCartney) announced that it would be buying a 51 percent stake in his brand in January. His collection featured a whopping 60 looks and was really like three (or four or five?) shows in one, and they all impressively lived up to our outsized expectations. From the beautifully understated opener (a tailored navy coat fastened with one simple, leather strap) to the showstopping closer (a futuristic color-blocked dress done in metallic tinsel), not to mention all of the vignettes in between (camouflage kilts! chunky fox furs! satin wide-leg trousers! peekaboo cocktail stunners! three-dimensional florals!), there was much to covet about this collection, which I’m guessing will be a career game-changer.
Feb. 18, 4 p.m.: Christopher Bailey showed a print for everyone in his dense collection for Burberry Prorsum: stripes, cow blotches, hearts, leopard spots, you name it. But if those hearts look familiar, it’s because they surfaced in the house’s menswear collection last month. Consider them to fall 2013 what that cute owl was for fall 2012.
