LONDON FASHION WEEK: "I'M PASSIONATE about fashion and what it can do for our country", said Samantha Cameron yesterday, dressed head to toe in British labels, at the opening of the 27th London Fashion Week at Somerset House.
The British prime minister’s wife who is an ambassador for the British Fashion Council last night hosted a reception at No 10 Downing Street for movers and shakers in the industry. Harold Tillman, chairman of the council, however, referred at the opening to the “suffering” that government cuts have had on trade, but added that the show schedule offered diversity, innovation, newness and established design talent.
“Fashion is one world now,” he told The Irish Times, “and we are getting better at selling our product internationally – London is not just about creativity, it’s about business.”
Kicking off the first of the 65 catwalk presentations for the tenth consecutive season, was Paul Costelloe, whose 24-year-old daughter Jessica, a flame-haired mezzo-soprano just graduated from the Julliard School of Music in New York, made a memorable cameo appearance at the start of the show dressed in a bright red tweed boucle coat emblematic of the use of heritage fabrics throughout the collection. “Irish materials like plaids and herringbones seemed just right for now,” said the designer who has secured a new backer for his womenswear label.
“I loved the brightness and the quality of the tweed.”
Many of the shapes were his signature ones, tunic and tent dresses with Peter Pan collars and neat suits with flirty skater skirts. Even the models’ uniformly coiffed red crimped hair was a tribute to his Irish roots and the chunky tweed swagger coats updated with hoodies evoked the simplicity and youthfulness of the late 1960s.
Menswear was more buttoned up and tight-fitting with jackets and trousers in velvet or Harris tweed giving way to more languid grey greatcoats.
Orla Kiely’s still-life show, all garden sheds and trees decorated with stuffed birds, promoted her new collection of abstracted bird prints inspired by Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 movie, The Birds. The event premiered a short movie made in Los Angeles two weeks ago with hip young US actors and artists wearing her new collection by Mercedes Hellwein, a young director whose family live in Ireland.
Kiely’s husband and business partner Dermott Rowan said their sales figures are up 15 per cent on last year, that Kiely’s Citroën car is now in production, a second fragrance is on the way and their new flagship shop on the King’s Road opened just before Christmas. Rowan who was appointed to the board of the Crafts Council of Ireland in January takes up his position shortly.
“I am glad to be reconnected to Ireland. Orla and I are fiercely proud to be Irish and I think we can make a difference,” he said.