Gareth Pugh prepares for battle at London Fashion Week

British avant-garde designer Gareth Pugh sent a model army down the
London catwalk Saturday, equipping them with leather
armour, sweeping black gowns and Roman centurion-style headpieces to mark
his
label’s 10th anniversary.

The models’ faces were painted white with red crosses, the flag
of England’s patron saint, Saint George, whose legendary battle with a
dragon is depicted in an altarpiece at the Victoria and Albert Museum where
the show was held.

To a soundtrack of chanting crowds, the helmeted models strode down
the runway in black leather breastplates worn over floor-trailing skirts
with nipped-in waists or dresses adorned with black spikes that shimmered
like chain mail — or dragon scales.

On closer inspection, the spikes turned out to be tens of thousands
of hand-cut plastic drinking straws, and the chanting was the sound of
Pugh’s home team, Sunderland Football Club. “It’s nice to mix the
masculine with the very feminine — these very big, almost Disney dresses
with this very tough attitude, hats and make-up,” he
told AFP.

For all its reputation for creativity, London rarely sees such
conceptual
shows and Pugh’s return to the city where he has long lived and worked has
been welcomed by the fashion industry.
“There’s been nothing like this since (Alexander) McQueen,” said veteran
fashion journalist Hilary Alexander. “It was very powerful; I thought it was
fabulous.”

The show opened with a short film of a woman cutting off her blonde
tresses
and smearing herself in red paint in the sign of the cross of Saint George
before she is seemingly burned alive.
Pugh insisted it was less a depiction of English nationalism, which the
flag is often used to represent, than an ideal of sacrificing oneself for a
larger group, be that a nation or a football team.

The designer, whose clothes have been described as wearable sculptures,
said it was also “about the rejection of a traditional idea of what is
beautiful”.

J.W. Anderson’s ‘mash-up’

Pugh’s show was a highlight of London Fashion Week this season, but he is
only one among a number of stars who made their names in the city before
spreading their wings abroad.

Jonathan Anderson, creative director of LVMH-owned luxury label Loewe,
earlier Saturday showed his autumn/winter collection for his own line, J.W.
Anderson, in which LVMH also has a stake.
It was bursting with colours and texture and the intention, he told
reporters, was not to create “a look” but a series of outfits worn by
individual women.

The tops, tunics and coats had 80s-style volume, with puffed out shoulders
and sleeves, worn over cord straight-legged trousers tucked into knee-high
leather boots in red, yellow and grey.
“We looked at moments of the early 80s, early 90s… that period of
fashion
was probably one of the most exciting moments in fashion,” Anderson said.

Outfits were draped around the body, flared in a peplum waist, fashioned
into a high collar, or belted, while Anderson also played with fabrics in
what
he called a “textural mash-up”.
There were oversized coats in pink, brown or purple leather, others in
grey
and soft pink suede, as well as striped tops in green velvet or in
shimmering
metallic pink and purple.

The combinations created “something that felt against the ideas of
conforming to a look and trying to challenge ourselves”, Anderson said.
(Alice Ritchie, AFP)

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