London Shows Sexy and Colorful Styles for Spring

Designers opted for the sexy and colorful for next spring’s womenswear at London Fashion Week, but stuck to a timeless style to appeal to budget-conscious buyers picky about adding to their wardrobe.

Short dresses and high heels featured prominently on the catwalk at many spring/summer 2011 shows, with Julien Macdonald injecting doses of glamour by looking to the boudoir.

His models wore pastel-colored and flower-printed short frilly dresses, at times transparent, as well as long gowns with trains in lace and silk in bursts of color,and last match with LV Damier Azur Canvas Handbags. A puff of perfume minutes before the show added to the bedroom feel.

“I decided to take these English girls to Hollywood and I made them very ultra glamorous and ultra sexy,” he said.

Hong Kong-born John Rocha took last season’s trend of underwear as outerwear one step further, playing with corsets and bras, sometimes put in as panels in jackets.

His collection was full of long fluid dresses, accessorized with backpacks and leather lace-up wedge boots.

“I just feel that at this moment in time, for me it’s all about texture. I try to make women look as beautiful as possible,” Rocha told Reuters.

“There’s enough sadness in the world, there’s enough drama.”

Burberry Prorsum mixed biker jackets with trenchcoats at mid and mini length, then combined the biker and trenchcoat looks in gabardine, bonded twill and other fabrics with all kinds of leather from heavy black to shiny patent in bright colors.
There was also a hint of the 1970s, with flared trousers, bold prints and fringed skirts and dresses at several shows.

For her Red Label line, Vivienne Westwood had a selection of trouser and short suits as well as loosely cut and shirt dresses that were worn with mismatched lace-up shoes.

Westwood, who rose to prominence 30 years ago during Britain’s punk era and shows her main line in Paris, also had net capes, hot pants and exaggerated cleavages on some designs.

“I’ve had a good run for sure. I can only say it’s because I do something that is not a market thing,” she told reporters when asked about her success. “I just do what I really like, and I make something that you can’t get anywhere else.”

Matthew Williamson presented a tropically colored collection, heavy in beading and embroidery. He had plenty of billowing gowns as well as short bustier dresses and collarless jackets worn with Hermes birkin Ostrich veines bags.

Skirts in muted metallics were fringed and worn with tribal-style platform sandals.

Savannah and Sienna Miller, the sisters behind the Twenty8Twelve brand, preferred a relaxed retro look, putting models in simple dresses puffed out with colorful petticoats, denim tops and shorts. Shoes were mainly flat sandals with big sparkly bows.

Paul Smith, one of Britain’s best-established designers, presented fitted and oversized shirts matched with cropped or oversized trousers — as if women had borrowed items from their boyfriends’ wardrobes.

Even though it has produced some of fashion’s biggest names London has struggled to maintain its international profile on a par with Paris, Milan and New York. However, it can boast an impressive front row of celebrities who this season included names such as Jude Law, Pamela Anderson and Sarah Jessica Parker.

“It’s never conventional,” Joan Burstein, founder of London’s renowned fashion store Brown’s, said. “I think that’s what we have in our favor from London Fashion Week.”

Fashion Goes Democratic for World’s Largest Show and LV Handbags

Fashion briefly went democratic Thursday as thousands of amateur models, some wearing their own clothes, stalked catwalks in Paris and Berlin in what

organizers said was the world’s largest fashion show.

Some 4,000 people of all shapes and sizes signed up for the shows, which took place in 50 French cities over the past week and culminated in Thursday’s twin

mega-show, launched simultaneously in the French and German capitals.

With Paris fashion week in full swing against a backdrop of economic anxiety, organizers from the department store chain Galeries Lafayette said they wanted

to bring best Louis Vuitton Replica Handbags and haute couture ‘s exclusive and glamorous aura to the high street.

“It’s our way of democratizing fashion week, of letting as many people as possible join in,” a spokeswoman said.

After a crash course in catwalking, hundreds of young women and some men gathered behind Paris’ golden-domed Opera house for last minute adjustments to hair and makeup.

As they waited their turn, girls with hair piled high above their heads sat on trunks of equipment as makeup artists from Yves Saint Laurent, the French

fashion house, daubed their eyelids and cheeks.

Few had the ultra-thin body type of their professional counterparts.

“The hardest part is keeping a straight face — I’m not really a model,” said Laura Issan, 19, a Parisian fashion-school student who wore a tailored red

jacket, black skirt and paillette hair brooch provided by designer Scarlet Roos.

Many in the backstage area said they were art- or fashion-school students with designer Hermes Birkin Bags trying out their creations in public for the first time. All were selected from apool of 13,000 online applicants for which the only criterion was an interest in fashion and the desire to walk.

“The fun thing about this is when people come up to you and ask where you got your clothes,” said 16-year-old student Marilyn Hampartzounian.

London Fashion Week ends with New Hoping

London Fashion Week drew to a close Tuesday after five days of shows that commentators said marked a new maturity for the event — despite a few catwalk tumbles and the odd naked model.

Three new designers were added to this season’s official schedule and one hatmaker sent his models out nude, proving that London can still lay claim to being the adventurous younger sibling of the New York, Paris and Milan shows.

But the presence of global glamour house Burberry alongside veterans Paul Smith and Vivienne Westwood has raised London’s game, and commentators have noted an increasing maturity here that demands to be taken seriously.

“I think it’s very polished, London, it’s very sophisticated. It’s lost that feeling of craziness, but at the same time the actual designs are new,” British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman told AFP.

A sombre note was set by Monday’s memorial service for designer Alexander McQueen, who committed suicide in February.

Among those who attended the ceremony in St Paul’s Cathedral were US Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, “Sex in the City” star Sarah Jessica Parker, Icelandic pop star Bjork and models Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell.

Wintour and Parker stayed on for the Burberry Prorsum show late Tuesday to watch a typically assured collection dominated by Dior Gaucho Lambskin Bags and trousers contrasted with soft fabrics and bright accessories.

The models wore sky-high platform pumps which were clearly hard to walk in — two models had to remove them and another took an embarrassing tumble.

Leather black biker jackets and padded beige leather trench coats were nipped in at the waist by bright belts in mint green and turquoise.

The bright colours echoed the neons that have peppered other shows here this weekend, including those by two of London’s brightest young stars, Christopher Kane and Giles Deacon.

Kane displayed intricate designs in lace, graphic print and embroidery — all in shocking pinks, oranges and greens. He explained: “Working in neon gets the heart going.”

Meanwhile Giles used a riot of colour, from bright-metallic eye-makeup to cartoonish knits, for a fun collection modelled by curvaceous models Kelly Brook and Abbey Clancey, the fiancee of England footballer Peter Crouch.

Some spectacular new venues were introduced onto the catwalk schedule this season, including a disused power station by the River Thames, and the old Eurostar train station at Waterloo, a cavernous space with a glass roof.

Another rising star, Peter Pilotto, used the station platforms as the catwalks for his show, displaying a mix of complicated pattern cutting and flyaway fabrics, slit skirts and full length jersey dresses in white and blue.

London has always been known as a place where new designers can get themselves heard, and French hatmaker Charlie Le Mindu has used this to great effect, hitting the headlines last year for a LV Damier Azur Canvas Handbag.

This season he sent several of his models out on the catwalk with nothing on, to ensure nothing distracted from their hats.

He echoed Vogue editor Shulman’s suggestion that London was becoming more serious, but he told AFP that it mustn’t forget its roots but should “have some more fun”.

The grande dame of British fashion, Vivienne Westwood, has never struggled to mix maturity with fun and her Red Label collection this season was no exception, offering elegant yet funky suits with make-up that looked like the models had been splashed with brightly coloured paint.

“It’s been such a special week again,” said Harold Tillman, head of the British Fashion Council, adding: “In 2012 we’ve got the Olympics… we’ve got to start thinking about that.”

Among those helping Tillman think about London’s future will be Prime Minister David Cameron’s wife Samantha, who is hoping to become formally involved with the event from next season.