Officially, the first day of London Fashion Week is today, September 17th. But around these few days there are a million parties, exhibitions and openings, so in fact it all started more than a week ago - with the opening of the exhibition Hussein Chalayan at the Lisson gallery. At the same time, it turned out that Chalayan has two exhibitions at the same time: the second, smaller and quieter, opened yesterday in the Spring Projects space. Usually it is such a very trendy photo studio in the backyard of the world, which has its own great bar. This bar is visited by everyone who shoots in Spring - the editor of the entire London gloss and advertising world, tired models and photographers, artists and art critics. The space is very friendly.
At the opening Hussein Chalayan carried his incredibly long-nosed and curly-haired son in his arms and whispered in the corner with Zahoy Hadid … On this, in fact, the highlights of the evening ended: the exhibition itself is called B-Side, and this is a very accurate name. A couple of plastic models of dresses from two years ago, a video about beautiful people and clothes from the video. Therefore, we very quickly left for another opening (in London, all events around the gallery take place on Thursdays) - exhibitions Gosha Rubchinsky at the tiny gallery at Pleasant Associates. There are a lot of such galleries in London, and they are all alike - a small white room, entrance from the street, exhibitions are very intimate.
Photo from the exhibition of Gosha Rubchinsky
Photos of high-rise buildings from the outskirts of Moscow, St. Petersburg sailors - I'm not sure that the British are able to understand what Gosha is talking about. All the same, this is a very Russian story, and it has to be explained on the fingers.
That London is hosting a fashion week is clear not only in the vicinity of the Strand and around the places where fashion shows are taking place. If you walk down the street somewhere in the area of Hoxton or Islington, crowds of models will rush to meet you. They are very easy to figure out: they are tall, skinny girls, dressed mostly in black, with a large bag or backpack, which fits a lookbook, a puffy A4 album. Each of them has an A-Z card in their hands. This is the most convenient map of London, which is issued to all models by agencies.
Audience at Somerset House
Today I went to Somerset House to get my badge and look at what they call a big name. Exhibition … All around is a pretty wild mix of accredited American tourists and fashionistas. The main screenings take place in the pavilion, built on the inner square of Somerset, and to enter the exhibition halls and the reception desk, one must go through the colonnade at the entrance and bypass the pavilion. About 30 street fashion photographers are on duty near the colonnade. The most ridiculous thing I saw today was three photographers taking pictures of photographer Ivan Rodich.
Street fashion photographer Ivan Rodich
An exhibition is essentially a Sunday Up Market with the coolest brands, but you can't buy anything - it's an exhibition. Shoes Finsk, orphan dresses Minimarket, hats Stephen jones and about a million more mini-stands with everything in the world. This is a purely professional story - for buyers and for some particularly corrosive editors.
Exhibition for buyers
The exhibition once again proved to me that I really, really love Cassette playa - they are all good with imagination. Instead of a dull stand, they put a black room where you can go behind a black curtain and make yourself a mini-movie of 6 frames with rather trashy characters, like from a primitive graphic editor from the early 2000s. Feather frames, 3D naked women, wolves, zippers and Tough Luck lettering. Class.
Update: the next day, I accidentally found in my pocket a piece of paper with a link to the Cassette Playa website, where all the animated videos were posted, including mine from yesterday. After that, I was stuck on the site for thirty minutes.
There are kilometer-long queues for the shows. Having stood waiting for Felder. Felder for about forty minutes and after listening to about a million people repeating "fucking schedules, huh?", I realized that I was late for the meeting and waved my hand. Since all the shows can be watched online live (after the show, the video appears by the evening of the current day), parties have become the most important thing during fashion week. Today is the PPQ party, the official opening of the week.
Impressions
All shows are broadcast live on a separate website - londonfashionweeklive.co.uk. Some brands are more demanding about their online shows and turn them into a separate event - for example, the Burberry Prorsum show will be broadcast on Look At Me.
The cooler the brand, the later the show date; on the first day, less significant, though usually no less interesting, designers showcase their summer collections. One of the brightest accents of the first day of LFW is the show Maria Grachvogel.
View the full show.
A former bank worker from the City of London, Maria founded her brand in 1994 and now dresses celebrities like Elle Macpherson and Yasmine Le Bon. In the summer collection, delicate beige alternates with bright yellow, pearl gray and deep blue, a lot of draperies, a lot of flying maxi dresses made of translucent crepe and silk, but there are also modest cases and casual wide trousers. But even with an abundance of draperies and bright prints, silhouettes remain very clean and crisp.
Another curious collection - Bora aksu … Originally from Turkey, Bora showed an avant-garde set of short dresses with ruffles and crazy prints and skinny trousers with layered tops and elaborate blouses. But most of all we liked the incredible tights. For the show, Bora asked his aunt in Izmir to knit for him almost two dozen giant ants (!) To decorate the hair of models with them - as the idea of the collection, he said, arose when he once observed an anthill.
View the full show.
The first day of LFW ended, as is customary, with a party. The party has its own rules. The most important thing is the heels. The higher the better. This is a dress code and must not be violated. Even the gray old lady - not sure why she went there - was at the PPQ party wearing stilettos that I wouldn't even dare try on. You also can't take a young man with you - he will obviously be bored. You need to take either a girlfriend or a gay man - this is 99% of all those present. Dances, a lot of beautiful people, sequins and leopard prints, as well as all the main heels, dresses and bags of the season for every second - this is a plus. Forty-minute lines for cocktails is a minus. In front of me in line was the same Ivan Rodich - he, it seems to me, has a fixation on blondes with long hair, not only in his blog, but also in life: he had four long-haired girlfriends, and he touched everyone by the butt.
To be continued.
View photos from all shows of the first day of LFW.
Watch video from LFW shows.