(Image: Mother of Pearl)
With London Fashion Week having just ended, there’s no doubt that we got to see some immense talent take place on the runway, giving us some exciting new – and old – trends to look forward to for next autumn and winter. You may be glad to hear that you’ll be keeping a tight hold onto your leopard print coats, midi skirts, newly bought neons and faux fur jackets, and any old quilted gilets and puffers can come back out all in due time. Oversized bags were everywhere, vintage florals took centre stage, head-to-toe red is going to be the new beige and sustainability in fashion is going to be bigger than it ever was before. It was a truly inspiring week for the industry, and with fashion having moved to Milan and next Paris, we’re going to recollect some of our many LFW highlights, and the very few lowlights.


This week was certainly concrete proof that fashion is not just about clothing that looks great. Fashion can often symbolise a form of art, politics, culture and change, and this was evident in many of the London collections we saw. There was a heavy emphasis on sustainability and ending animal cruelty; Victoria Beckham vowed to discontinue any use of exotic skins, Oxfam’s ‘Recycled’ show was bigger than ever and Mother of Pearl’s showcase represented how synthetic fibres impact the ocean. Vivienne Westwood is a designer who’s been fighting the sustainability and cruelty-free cause for decades, but it’s this year that many of her fellow designers have finally listened. This sparks an incredibly positive change in the industry, and fast-fashion is a concept that’s becoming very much un-trendy, as we’re being urged to be more conscious of how we buy clothes.


Although it’s amazing to see such progression and awareness for the environment in the fashion industry, there did seem to be a lack of new trends to feel excited over. We have seen leopard print, faux fur, midi skirts, coord suits, satin and summer-dresses-for-winter flooding our fashion feeds for some time now, so it would have been refreshing to see something a bit more surprising. Perhaps it’s a ploy to keep us wearing our leopard print coats for a little longer – that’s the sustainable thing to do – so for now, we’ll just have to sit back and wait for SS20 to set our new-trend pulses racing.

Fashion weeks will never go without some controversy, and despite Riccardo Tisci’s heavily commended Burberry show, one piece of clothing caused a lot of upset, which thankfully resulted with the designer publicly apologising and removing the item from the line. That aside, there was a lot to applaud in this runway. The inspiration behind these creations centred around today’s youth, and the class divides we see in Britain. With Brexit only weeks away, his show was very topical, giving the Burberry line some contemporary, political depth we didn’t realise we needed to see.

There were some wonderful, upcoming designers that wowed us too. Mimipikita, a designer brand founded by three women all from different backgrounds and cultures, showed us the importance of diversity and inclusivity in fashion. Polish designer Marta Jakubowski brought back the female power suit, serving us minimalist style with a large side of feminism. Matty Bovan was eccentric, quirky and exciting as ever – we wouldn’t expect anything less. Molly Goddard gave us serious dress-envy with her beautiful, floaty pieces in bright colours that we’re predicting to become very big soon. With big names such as Ashley Williams, House of Holland, Shrimps and Richard Quinn taking on London Fashion Week, these names definitely didn’t fall back into the crowd.


Let’s not forget Pam Hogg being outrageously amazing as ever of course.

All in all, it was an exciting week for fashion, and a relief for the high-heel wearers to not have to struggle on the cobbled stones of Somerset House. London did not let us down, and it’s made us excited for how fashion is going to dramatically change for the better in the years to come. If there’s one thing that we’ve learnt from LFW, it’s that sustainability is the way forward, and that’s a pretty great thing.
Writer: Magda Kaczmarska | @_magda__