From Prue Leith to Romeo Beckham and Lucy Bronze, London fashion week is hard to beat | London fashion week

The place else can you discover Jerry Corridor, Romeo Beckham, Prue Leith, Barbara Hepworth, Robert Mapplethorpe, Lucy Bronze and Marina Abramović multi functional place? For an eclectic forged of characters, London style week is difficult to beat.Corridor starred as a “diva psychic”, utilizing clairvoyant powers to hawk bracelets in a brief play by Laura Waldren staged by the jewelry model Completedworks, whereas Beckham and Leith made their London catwalk debuts, for H&M and Vin + Omi. Hepworth and Mapplethorpe got here alongside for the experience in spirit, on the moodboards at Roksanda and Emilia Wickstead respectively, whereas the England footballer Bronze and the efficiency artist Abramović had front-row seats.Romeo Beckham on the catwalk for H&M. {Photograph}: James Manning/PAThe by way of line of the present London style scene is feminine creativity and management. Whereas Milan and Paris are dominated by male inventive administrators, London style week is a matriarchy. The headline acts of the weekend have been all ladies: Simone Rocha, Emilia Wickstead, Roksanda Ilinčić and Edeline Lee.“I can’t consider I’m nonetheless right here,” mentioned Ilinčić, backstage at a present that celebrated a landmark 20 years as a designer, after teetering on the point of administration in 2024. “It’s bittersweet, as a result of so lots of my extremely proficient friends didn’t make it. However I’m very proud.”Roksanda attire are worn by Michelle Obama and Cate Blanchett however Ilinčić’s coronary heart, just like the core of her loyal clientele, belongs to the artwork world. Her collections usually take inspiration from little-known feminine artists, however “for this landmark season I assumed, let’s go together with a celebrity”, she mentioned.“Barbara Hepworth was a pioneer at a time when the world didn’t actually consider in ladies as artists, and the Hepworth museum in Wakefield is one among my most favorite locations.”There was a direct line from Hepworth’s monumental natural sculptures, with holes that body the panorama on the opposite facet, to sheath attire with shapes bitten out on the torso to point out the physique beneath.“Her shapes are pebbles, and hills, however they’re additionally futuristic,” mentioned Ilinčić, who turned pebble varieties into cocoon coats, and the River Calder that flows previous the Wakefield museum into dramatic leather-based fringing.skip previous e-newsletter promotionSign as much as Trend StatementStyle, with substance: what’s actually trending this week, a roundup of one of the best style journalism and your wardrobe dilemmas solvedPrivacy Discover: Newsletters might comprise details about charities, on-line adverts, and content material funded by outdoors events. 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We use Google reCaptcha to guard our web site and the Google Privateness Coverage and Phrases of Service apply.after e-newsletter promotionLucy Bronze on the Richard Quinn present on Saturday. {Photograph}: Jeff Moore/PAAt the final minute, Ilinčić had determined to throw her model a twentieth celebration, and the gathering was sexier and extra va-va-voom than current seasons, with slinky attire outnumbering the ethereal and floaty.Wickstead’s present in her London flagship retailer topped a busy week during which she dressed the Princess of Wales for Donald Trump’s state go to and made an Audrey Hepburn-inspired robe for the actor Marisa Abela’s marriage ceremony.Her catwalk collections are the place Wickstead, a society style favorite, will get to precise her edgier facet and, true to kind, this season’s muse was Mapplethorpe. Not a lot the “strappy, sexual” moments, she mentioned backstage, however “the extent of depth, of romance” in his portrait images of Susan Sarandon, sleepy-eyed and sheet-wrapped, and of the designer Carolina Herrera reclining in a hammock.Emilia Wickstead: choker-wrapped silk ribbons. {Photograph}: Jeff Moore/PASo we bought choker-wrapped silk ribbons as an alternative of leather-based bondage straps. Her model is normally “fairly buttoned-up and ideal”, so she had enjoyable kicking again with double denim – “I used to be pondering of Patti Smith as properly, and the entire Chelsea lodge gang” – in addition to florals hand-painted on to pre-creased cloth.Rocha’s logos are bows, pearls, ribbons and lace, sugary symbols that really feel ever extra loaded as a progressive style period celebrating fluid identities regresses, in keeping with the zeitgeist, into conventional gender roles.Rocha’s femininity is “undoubtedly not conservative”, she insisted. “I prefer to take female tropes and twist them, manipulate and play with them, push them.”Sunday’s catwalk had chunky Croc sandals made cute with diamante Mary Jane straps, and a garden-party-sweet rose printed cardigan shrugged over a black sequin bra prime that might have danced at Studio 54.Rocha has constructed a buzz that might maintain its personal on the larger stage of Paris style week. “I’ll at all times present the place I really feel I can do one of the best present. Right now I nonetheless really feel I can placed on my finest present in London,” she mentioned.