(Reuters) – Rainbow colored metallics, abstract prints and edgy florals sashayed down the runway on day four of London Fashion Week, which featured a star-studded line-up of designers from Peter Pilotto to Christopher Kane and Burberry’s Christopher Bailey.
The day opened with Peter Pilotto, which saw its designers Peter Pilotto and Christopher de Vos take a step back from their usual color palette, with a collection of monochrome pieces featuring boxy cropped jackets, revealing pencil skirts and ruffled peplum details.
“We never did black and white before, so it felt really fresh,” de Vos told Reuters backstage after the show.
The design duo is famous for their use of digital print, which was used across the collection in an abstract and contrasting way.
“It’s always print. Digital print is core of it, and it’s just so great because you can just express so many things, so in different ways you can make all these different layers, it’s just so limitless,” he added.
Graphic prints and geometric shapes gave the clothes a modern feel, with square mirrors, beading and woven embroidery adding another layer of texture to the clothes. Day dresses featured lace cut-outs and cap-sleeves in cross bodice tops.
Cobalt blues, scarlet reds, and bright lilacs served to enhance the monochrome pieces at first, before flourishing into full bursts of color on the catwalk intermixed with black and white effects.
Scottish designer Christopher Kane added a futuristic edge to his vision for spring/summer 2013, fusing nuts and bolts, bows and plastic ruffles.
The collection featured boxy white jackets, candy-colored pleated dresses held together with nuts and bolts, and tailored dresses in white, canary yellow and muted neutral prints embellished with bows, detailed beading and masking tape.
The designer revamped his trademark bandage dress using plastic ruffles and nipped-in waists, added floaty skirts to draped dresses and kept accessories minimal, with models wearing matching shoes in neutral shades, detailed with spikes, spirals, nuts and bolts.
“It’s such extraordinary sophistication combined with absolute creative brilliance, it’s so out of the box the way he is thinking, and it was just incredible, and I think that’s increasingly what London is becoming known for,” Lucy Yeomans, editor-in-chief of fashion retail site Net-A-Porter.com, told Reuters after the show.
WILD SIDE
Kane, 30, has become a staple of British fashion after launching his own label in 2006, gaining recognition for his creativity with color (using solely neon hues for his first collection) and shapes, presenting bold and vibrant creations.
Designer Erdem Moralioglu introduced a wild side to his collection of pastels and florals for spring/summer 2013, adding snakeskin panels to his feminine dresses.
Models at Erdem wore sleek side-parted hairstyles as they walked down the runway in vibrant pinks, oranges, yellows and blues, with floral embroidery on sheer and light fabrics. While the shapes were kept lady-like with long tailored skirts and modest sleeveless tops, the vivid colors lent playfulness to the collection.
Canadian-born British designer Moralioglu has been making waves with his innovative use of intricate prints since his own label launched in 2005, and won the British Fashion Council’s (BFC) Fashion Forward Award in 2005, and the BFC and Vogue’s Designer Fashion Fund in 2010.
Burberry Chief Creative Officer Christopher Bailey finished the day with an explosion of saturated metallic hues, drawing his inspiration from Norman Parkinson photographs and the company’s archive of capes and corsets.
“The collection was a bit more joyful and quite sassy and a bit sexy,” Bailey told reporters backstage.
“It’s about taking those kind of authentic signature DNA elements from what Burberry is about, our heritage and our history. But then making them, of the moment and kind of giving them a spirit.”
Bailey delivered an explosion of rainbow-colored metallic trench coats, fitted corsets, slinky pencil skirts and sleek silk dresses in raspberry pinks, emerald greens and sapphire blues also featured laced with a metallic edge.
The trench coat – a Burberry staple – appeared in a variety of different forms. Classic styles were covered in colored metallic lace, capes came in both long and short versions and cropped structured jackets created boxy shoulders with slim silhouettes.
The show was streamed live to stores worldwide and online.
“I think when you do a show, it’s kind of a perfect opportunity for people to feel your brand and your image and kind of these ideas, music, lights and beautiful girls.”
U.S. Vogue Editor Anna Wintour, tennis player Andy Murray and performer Dita von Teese all turned up for the show.
“The coats are always one of my favorite things but I’m really loving all the accessories right now too,” von Teese told Reuters.
(Additional Reporting by Joanne Nicholson, editing by Paul Casciato)