Can We PLEASE Talk About Clothes?
At least at Fashion Week.
This is classic London Fashion Week behavior: Within 24 hours of my arrival, four different friends have texted me, “LFW sucks.” I really don’t understand them. The benefit of LFW, to me, an American outsider, is that it lacks that overbearing gravitational force of other major fashion weeks. Mega-billion, or high-in-the-mega-million, dollar brands rarely show here—with the exception of Burberry—and so the week is stitched together by a federation of independents with fearless creativity. To me, this is a good fashion week—nay, a great one!—but the malaise around LFW coming from inside the industry has little to do with fashion. We’ve become addicted to the vibes, to fashion shows being about stunts, front row gags, celebrities spotted to actually enjoy what we came for: the clothes.
You don’t have to look hard for the proof. Who, that you follow, is posting about the actual garments shown on the runway? Now who’s posting about street style, about models doing silly things backstage, about a celebrity answering silly questions in the FROW, about the weather, about the invite, about the free gift, about the brand dinner, about the ambiance in the showroom, about the afters, about the red carpet, about the car ride, about the well curated brand activation? Personal style discourse, the closest thing to writing about fashion that survives, thankfully, here on Substack, is also not really about the runway—but about what the runway means for you. That’s good. But I still care about F-ashion as a form of design. And I think you should too.
London Fashion Week started, for me, at Chopova Lowena, but for my colleagues it started two days earlier at the Central Saint Martins MA show. (Unlike everyone else, whose flights from London or to Milan were cancelled, it was actually my flight to London that was randomly cancelled, getting me on the ground a day late.) Looking at the images, I am especially enamored with Pranajali Menaria’s boxy jackets and “bloom” miniskirts—that shape, something stylish but oversize and a bizarre little skirt, was all over the streets in London this week. A similar silhouette from Zeina Issa, too, made from upcycled belly dancing chains. Ennis Finnerty-Mackay’s ultra-cinched jackets and full skirts for men are just gorgeous, with an almost period-piece energy. I’m gobsmacked by what Mie Mie can do with tulle—layered pieces that become “jeans” paired with a rugby shirt of hand-cut stripes. I appreciated the casual spirit of the work, anyone can make a gaggy ballgown, but it takes a bit of cleverness to make something people could wear everyday, to integrate into their lives and behaviours. That, I’m gagged by.
By the time I set foot in London, I was already late to the Chopova Lowena presentation. I zoomed over in our i-D branded Mercedes (thank you Mercedes!). Here are two women who can’t help but make clothes for people to really wear. The gags and the charm at Chopova Lowena is sublimated to the joy. Even in a hip-padded skirt with ball-piercings or a boned jacket made golf-bag pockets, you feel emboldened to stomp through the city, not just stand and pose for a photo to post on grid. That ruggedness, mixed with a ceaseless eccentricity, is what keeps the Chopova Lowena customers, fangirls, and wider clan coming back season after season.
The lucky of us had a preview of the collection in Paris during men’s fashion week, where Emma Chopova and Laura Lowena run a sales showroom themselves, with their small team of equally bold women. Golf and the Regency Era were the inspirations, but in the designers hands those ideas morphed into collaged knitwear, argyle bomber jackets skirt suits, and tiered frocks with embroidered butterflies made from old Chopova Lowena fabrics. The heroes were the faux fur carriage boots. And the wide necked coats. And the tiered plaid cape. And the pearl-strung cameos featuring a girl lifted from a Bulgarian postcard. I am the most biased observer of the Chopova Lowena world, but what I am consistently impressed by is Emma and Laura’s eagerness to move on without losing a sentimentality for what they have loved. They started as “the skirt brand” and in this collection, the carabiner skirt was almost the least interesting element. They can modulate their language to go anywhere, even into scents. The room was perfumed with a mash-up of fresh cut grass and their Rosa is Queen fragrance by olfactory duo Denim Sykes.
Happy to run into Rian Phin at the presentation, who actually meditates on theory and design.
Also happy to run into my friend Harmony Tividad, who is playing a series of shows throughout Europe this month and has an adventurous and adorable sense of style.
Moira Gonzalez showed up in an outstanding black-velvet-ribboned Ellen Poppy Hill jacket. That’s the other great thing about London: Friends really wear emerging talent’s clothes.
My favorite couple in London: Martha Somerfield and Joel Wilson. Martha is the brand director at Chopova Lowena and the pioneer of cool-top-and-miniskirt. A style North Star. Joel designs the world’s most incredible bags, which he hand-sews in his studio himself. He had just done a drop of 10 styles earlier in the week that I am kicking myself for missing. The ultimate IYKYK accessory of 2026.
Martha & Joel
Erdem doesn’t get enough credit for being not only a gifted designer but a world-builder. At his 20th anniversary show, which Alex attended with Laura Weir in the VVVIP section, he flexed so hard with exquisite ribboned dresses and patchworked reduxes of his Barbour jackets. He knows his history—Lady Troubridge’s illicit affair with Radclyffe Hall, anyone?—but isn’t mired by it. I sat next to Susie Lau, who was reminiscing about all the Erdem shows past, a testament in itself that an inspired dresser like Susie is just as enamored with Erdem’s restrained exuberance as with Molly Goddard or Simone Rocha. The strongest looks on the runway mixed propriety with insouciance: a falling off point d’esprit tulle dress over an ivory slip, a regal red ribbons on a drop-waist gown, pleated bulbs around Kiki Willems tiny frame. I don’t think he needed the jeans to make the point that cool girls can wear Erdem.
Simone Rocha, hehehehehehehehehehehehehee. That’s my girl, obviously, and what if I told you that my first ever fashion show in London was Simone’s one at the Ally Pally 7 years ago! She was back in North, overlooking the city, to talk about Irish folklore and British Pony Kids. I was pleased to see her Adidas Originals collab not hew too hard into sportiness. She made a taffeta dress and tackies with thigh cut-outs trimmed in ruffles. But more importantly for the pagan It Girls of Clan Rocha, are the metal-linked dresses and pop-on split hood dickies, two things I could never have imagined in the Rocha universe, but that she deftly adds to her oeuvre like a master chef adds zest to a sauce. Many of us were wooed by her prize ribbon dresses, which Simone giggled as she told me after the show: “We’re done with ribbons! That’s the last time we’re going to do ribbons on the runway.” Everyone, the time is now to shop!
Everyone in London was quickly obsessed with The Vxlley (“The Valley”) by Daniel Della Valle. He was described to me as a “botanist-artist” (okay) and I was told this was to be his only-ever fashion show. He feels like someone who could either win the Loewe Craft Prize or win the Loewe job in a future round of musical chairs.
Everyone’s also obsessed with Derrick, a Savile Row-esque brand of menswear by Luke Derrick. I was impressed by everything he could do with a lapel: Cut it into a hood, a cowl, a up-tight, swooping low. The jackets and knits were the stars… some of the pants shapes read clunky, but were helped by his fantastic cast of models, including The Crown’s Khalid Abdalla.
Petra Fagerstrom needs to get on the catwalk, and stat! I missed her presentation because of a meeting (ew, honestly), but find her brand of sportiness and c*ntiness to be unique in the market. She manages to make corseted blazers or pencil skirts not look dowdy or nostalgic, and manipulates fabric to be holographic or trompe l’oeil without feeling gimmicky.
Marley and Alex covered the Ewusie and Selasi shows—read more on i-D.co.
A Letter is probably theeeee brand of London but the designers “weren’t doing press.” Okayyyyyyyyy. Their crisp, weird pieces don’t necessarily need to be shouting to get appropriate cred, but I do appreciate when designers are eager to open their worlds.
Fantastic Jawara collection and lookbook.
Conner Ives is already the purveyor of vintage tapestry coats to the right women, and he’s about to get one million more orders after Tish Weinstock opened the show in a caot with embellished jeans. His great strength as a designer is not overthinking things—he’s got big ideas but executes them with ease. The wedding dress that closed the show is a perfect example.
Rick Owens fav Leo Prothmann is doing stuff with leather you literally cannot imagine.
Burberry went spy-after-dark with oil slick clothes and a rainy runway. Nora Attal in a faux shearling was the hero look to me, sexy and unfussy, but you could imagine the beaded trousers on red carpets.
Did I miss anything? Other than the JW Anderson party and latest edition of Singing With My Friends (cancelled flight!), both which I heard ended in 3 a.m. dancing, and the Nothing dinner (sick!) where a cute new pink phone debuted? Message me please and let me know!
"and so the week is stitched together by a federation of independents with fearless creativity." took the words out of my mouth. lfw ftw