At London Fashion Week, looming war divided designers into either 1960s-focused escapists or sloganeering activists, reports Eoin Lyons
Fashion, the business of expensive frocks, skinny women and all round human decency, doesn't react well to looming war. And London Fashion Week, the five-day event that previews clothes for next autumn, began the same day protest marchers filed through Trafalgar Square leaving anti-war banners dangling from railings across the city.
Designers were probably as worried about the absence of many American store buyers, with their enormous budgets, as they were about what's happening in Iraq.
But looming war cast far deeper shadows on the often radical and politicised British designers than it did during the American shows the week before and divided most of them into two camps: the activists and the escapists.
Little known designers Julian Roberts and Sophie Cheung put themselves on the map by staying in bed at the Great Eastern Hotel under the banner "Make Fashion Not War" echoing John Lennon and Yoko Ono's honeymoon protest in Amsterdam in 1969. Their collection in an adjoining suite, "Pyjama Combat", included cargo pants with giant pockets in fluffy fleece.
"We are reacting to how we feel and our feeling about the war is to try and create a sanctuary", blabbed Roberts. As media grabbing tricks go, it worked, but the clothes were awful.
In case you thought you were the only one wondering whether Katherine Hamnet had become a candidate for a "Whatever Happened To?" TV special, the designer who wore a T-shirt with an anti-Falklands war slogan to meet Margaret Thatcher in 1984 decked out her models in T-shirts emblazoned with the words "Stop War Blair Out" and "Stop War, E-mail Your MP".
As for the rest, deciphering trends at London Fashion Week can be difficult because designers rarely come up with united statements. But these shows proved to be an exception, with many designers who took the escapist route harking back to the 1960s in one way or another.
It started with Frenchman Roland Mouret's collection, shown at a purpose-built venue on the King's Road, which included black shift dresses with PVC panels and neat grey mod suits with shiny black cuffs and collars.
Influenced by Pierre Cardin, new star Emma Hope went the space-age 1960s' route with jersey aviator helmets, cut-out mini dresses and A-line skirts pieced together with leather and suede into a pattern of the planets.
Inevitably many other fashion-lead designers didn't chart new territory and went with the flow, such as Clements Ribeiro with high-waisted A-line coats in swirly prints and oversized striped sweaters masquerading as dresses.
The emergence of all these easy-to-wear 1960s' clothes is strange because London's fashion reputation has been built on aggressive tailoring, artful deconstruction and mixing of different styles in one outfit. Instead, the overall look was streamlined and often seemed more French chic than British mish-mash. It seems that in troubled times, most designers produce clothes that sell.
Even the collections of rigorously avant-garde designers who went against the 1960s' vibe, such as Sophia Kokosalaki and Preen, were a little more palatable to international buyers.
But Boudicca, the label of East End duo Zowie Broach and Brian Kirby, still managed to stir the city up to a level of excitement that's been missing since Alexander McQueen departed for Paris. Their extraordinarily cut, all black collection won the only ovation of the season.
Intimate and personal venues are what young British designers excel at - partly because they're cheap - but many rejected the catwalk format altogether.
Frost French (the design team featuring actress Sadie Frost) showed a short film in a Piccadilly cinema that featured Jerry Hall sawing Helena Christensen in half in a mock circus act, and Kim Jones showed his New Romantic inspired collection on video projected onto a gallery wall.
Whatever the reason, London Fashion Week was pretty low-key. Only pop star Cristina Aguilera turned up at Gharani Strok (other front rows made do with the likes of Jennifer Saunders and Melissa Messenger), there were relatively few big parties and fewer famous models (Erin O'Connor was everywhere).
Thank heavens, then, for the Japanese buyers because it's arguable that without their voracious appetite for cutting-edge clothes, there would be no British fashion industry.