
A quiet London Fashion Week? Not if you know where to look
Once home to visionaries such as Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen, London Fashion Week has been synonymous with theatricality and boundary-pushing designs. But increased operational costs and other disruptions in the wake of Brexit, along with diminishing global interest in the city's designers, whose shows garner a fraction of the attention of those in other fashion capitals like Milan, Paris and even New York, has hampered the mood in recent years.
At the event's kickoff, the British Fashion Council's outgoing CEO Caroline Rush addressed some of those difficulties in a speech that concluded her 16-year tenure. 'London Fashion Week is about making meaningful connections… and cementing (designers') place on the global stage,' she said. 'These are challenging times, but this community is resilient — and as someone who has been there for a little while, I can tell you from experience that creativity is heightened even further when businesses face adversity.'
By the next season of shows in September, Rush's successor, Laura Weir, will be well into the role (she joins in April), marking a new chapter for the sector. 'Creativity, innovation, breaking boundaries… that is our role in the fashion industry and one that we are incredibly proud of,' Rush said, adding that London is fueled by 'high-octane creativity that you see nowhere else in the world.'
Despite the transitional period, London Fashion Week brimmed with unabridged talent and creativity — from cult names, like Paolo Carzana and Dilara Findikoglu, to the fledgling labels (Louther, Nuba and Olly Shinder) showing as part of talent incubator Fashion East. All of which, in the absence of bigger, heavy-hitting brands, had more space to shine.
Showgoers held out for a late show by Findikoglu, who returned after a season off, with a collection of body-hugging styles, including a black snakeskin corset worn by supermodel Lara Stone, who opened the show. The venue Electrowerkz — a sprawling warehouse known for its alternative club nights — was a fitting backdrop for Findikoglu's darkly romantic and subversive designs, which have drawn equally bold fans such as Lady Gaga, Madonna and Doja Cat. Also among the highlights were a skin-colored leather dress covered in intricate scrawls by tattoo artist Jonah Slater, and pieces covered in seashells — a nod to the goddess Venus, who was born in the sea.
Also with a late-night slot was Carzana, who drew about 120 people to his show in a cozy pub in Clerkenwell, a neighborhood popular with architects and other creatives. On a digital screen, the clothes can appear raggedy, as if intended to be worn by the cast of 'Les Misérables,' but the Welsh designer's slow fashion approach to hand-making, the use of vegetables, flowers and spice-based dyes, and the acute creativity in his construction, is what makes him a standout among his peers.
Popular mainstays, such as Roksanda, Simone Rocha and Erdem, stayed the course and presented collections that were unmistakably true to their brand identities. Inspired by the late British visual artist Phyllida Barlow, Roksanda leaned into odd color pairings, such as copper brown and Yves Klein blue, and vivid artistic prints. Art also typically plays a key role in Erdem's collections: this time, the eponymous designer partnered with Kaye Donachie, a Scottish painter known for her figurative works, on appliques hand-drawn onto gauzy fabrics, which made the models look like walking watercolor paintings.
Meanwhile, Simone Rocha turned to the childhood fable, 'The Tortoise and the Hare,' as the starting point for her collection. Some famous faces, including model and television host Alexa Chung and actresses Fiona Shaw and Bel Powley, made a surprise appearance on the runway, some carrying rabbit or turtle-shaped accessories. Rocha's signature darkly romantic pieces were complemented by a greater range of accessories, from the knitted neckerchief to the silver hardware (including belts, necklaces and earrings) that featured a padlock.
It was the return of Cool Britannia at brand S.S. Daley, which presented reinvented wardrobe staples such as trench coats, rain jackets, duffle coats, bomber jackets and pea coats to a score of '80s post-punk British hits from The Smiths, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and the Pet Shop Boys. The outerwear — the kind you'd see on a drizzly day in London — were not quite weather-appropriate, ironically. Instead, the classic pieces were refashioned in lightweight blue-and-white printed chiffon, tufted felt and floral chintz.
The collection was inspired by Scottish Colourists, a prolific group of painters in the 1920s known for their vibrant and confident use of colors, resulting in artworks that were often 'quite smudgy and fibrous,', said S.S. Daley founder and designer Steven Stokey-Daley. Backstage, Stokey-Daley shared that he had especially been drawn to Francis Cadell, one of the Scottish Colourists, who 'ventured out to find new color inspiration' — and so he replicated Cadell's painting of Iona Croft, an island off the west coast of Scotland, on felted pieces.
Daniel Fletcher's debut as creative director of Chinese fashion label Mithridate was a similar masterclass in British heritage. Pastel-hued sweaters were tied and swung over the shoulder, while pinstriped Oxford shirts were styled with leather brogues. On joining 'a young brand without an archive,' Fletcher took the opportunity to draw from his own heritage. 'I (wanted to) look at that preppy, eccentric way of dressing that is so unique to the UK,' he told CNN backstage after the show.
There was also plenty of appeal off the runway, as several designers opted to present their new designs privately, while others hosted events for their communities.
Saul Nash collaborated on a collection with athletic-wear maker Lululemon, while Ahluwalia teamed up with jewelry company Pandora on an engraving event. Elsewhere, Stefan Cooke and Grace Wales Bonner (who normally shows in Paris) prioritized in-person previews, while Aaron Esh, 16 Arlington's Marco Capaldo and Feben Vemmenby of Feben hosted private dinners, respectively. Labrum, Karoline Vitto and Tolu Coker opted for presentations, where people could drop in and see the designs throughout the day.
Asked why she had eschewed a show this season, Coker told CNN that a presentation 'felt more aligned' with the brand and business. 'I'm constantly evaluating how I present and how I tell stories. My practice is very multidisciplinary.' It may also mark a permanent shift, she said. 'As a young brand, I think that a runway show every season is not always the most effective way of maximizing resources, which often are very limited.'
Coker added that the label will present its collection via a showroom in Paris, and as a semi-finalist of this year's prestigious LVMH Prize, she will also present her collection alongside the other contestants — a move that will surely give the designer additional exposure outside of the UK. 'Paris makes a lot more sense for us because it's where retailers tend to place orders at the end of the season,' she said.
Some designers, including Jonathan Anderson, Rejina Pyo, Molly Goddard and Marta Marques and Paulo Almeida of Marques Almeida have decided to sit the show season out entirely, focusing instead on developing their collections off the runway. Also absent were Chopova Lowena and Knwls, which now only stage shows once a year, in September, demonstrating their ability to run a fashion business without abiding by traditional rules — which is no bad thing at all.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
Tony Awards: Every Best Musical Winner Since 1949
Since 1949, the Tony Awards have recognized an array of remarkable shows with the coveted title of Best Musical. Show-stopping classics from Cats, The Phantom of the Opera and Les Misérables to contemporary toe-tappers such as Rent, The Book of Mormon and Hamilton have won the Broadway honor over the years. Most recently, Maybe Happy Ending won the trophy at the 2024 Tony Awards. More from Deadline Deadline's Tony Awards Live Blog 'Hamilton' Reunion Performance Rouses Tony Awards Crowd As Lin-Manuel Miranda Leads Intricate Medley Of Songs - Watch Sarah Snook Doesn't Know How Cate Blanchett Would Turn "Picture Of Dorian Gray" Into A Film, But Would Love To Help Her Try Scroll through the gallery to take a look back at all the Best Musical winners. UPDATE: Tony Awards: Every Best Play Winner Since 1947 Best of Deadline Tony Awards: Every Best Play Winner Since 1947 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys, Oscars & More 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
The Real Message Behind Les Misérables
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. On February 7, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts suffered a presidential coup. Donald Trump filled its board of trustees with loyalists and declared himself its 'amazing Chairman.' On June 11, he is set to celebrate the dawn of what he has called a 'Golden Age in Arts and Culture' by attending a Kennedy Center performance of one of his favorite musicals, the globally popular adaptation of Victor Hugo's epic novel Les Misérables. Several cast members plan to boycott the opening. Perhaps they find it strange or even disconcerting that Trump is a big fan of Les Mis. Having declared of his Kennedy Center, 'It's not going to be woke,' why would he enjoy a tale in which the official victimization of society's underdogs is contrasted with the civilizing power of love, charity, and forgiveness? The term misérables can translate roughly to 'the wretched,' 'the dirt poor,' or even 'the scum of the Earth.' The frequent Trump epithet losers would be a suitably pejorative modern equivalent. This despised underclass is pitted against a punitive regime that honors bullies, sycophants, and plutocrats. They are not the sort of people who might expect compassion and understanding from the current administration. I find the gaudy, mass-market musical's appeal to Trump ironic but not surprising. Since it premiered on London's West End in 1985, the show, with its rousing anthems and its tear-jerking tale of victory over oppression, has thrilled more than 100 million people. We know that Trump has a weakness for bombastic 1980s musicals, and Les Mis is certainly that. Having spent four years writing a biography of Hugo, I can't help but find it a sweetened, antiseptic version of his weird, digressive underworld of moral and literal sewers. The original book would surely bamboozle and exasperate Trump if he ever undertook the journey through its 1,500 pages. [Read: America now has a minister of culture] The author himself wouldn't seem to hold much appeal for the leader of the MAGA movement. The president mentioned Hugo in 2018 at a White House dinner for Emmanuel Macron and the French delegation: 'This is the divine flame, which Victor Hugo wrote that 'evil can never wholly extinguish,' and which 'good can make to glow with splendor.'' Trump was referring to the shared military glories of France and the United States from the American Revolution through the Second World War. In fact, the words were taken from a description of the central character of Les Misérables, destitute following his conviction for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving children. The narrator wonders whether Jean Valjean's soul has been destroyed, or whether an immortal 'spark' (not 'flame') has survived his dehumanization by a vindictive justice system. When Les Misérables was published in 1862, Hugo was an outcast. The founder of two distinct periods of Romanticism, he was the world's most famous living writer and an international symbol of freedom and democracy. By then, at the age of 60, he had spent 10 years in exile after opposing the coup d'état led by Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, the self-crowned emperor of France who reigned as Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870. Hugo, as a refugee in the Channel Islands, was an embarrassment to the British government. The intelligence services of France and the United Kingdom considered him a socialist menace. Spies reported his dealings with suspected immigrant terrorists. His diatribe against 'Napoléon le Petit' was smuggled across the English Channel in walking sticks, sardine tins, and women's underwear. Miniature copies were concealed in souvenir plaster busts of Napoleon III. The exiled poet was criticized for his arrogant attempts to influence British and American foreign policy. He was mocked for his poor English and his wild appearance, as he recalled in his notebooks: 'To the English, I am shoking, excentric and improper'; 'I oppose the death penalty, which is not respectable'; 'I am an exile, which is repellent, and on the losing side, which is infamous.' I would venture to say that Hugo would not be made welcome in the Oval Office today: 'I look like a workman,' he wrote, and 'I fail to wear my tie in the correct fashion.' Les Misérables is one of the last universally read masterpieces in Western literature. In its own day, it was as popular as its musical adaptation would be in the next century. In France, it was bought even by people who had never learned to read. It was devoured by soldiers in the trenches of the American Civil War. Like all great works of art, it has a mind and momentum of its own. [Read: The fame of Victor Hugo] This ostensibly simple tale contains labyrinthine complexities and contradictions. Hugo had been a monarchist in his youth and then became a moderate liberal. At the time of the 1832 revolt, which takes up almost one-fifth of Les Misérables, he was a property-owning family man firmly opposed to violent protest. 'We should not allow barbarians to bespatter our flag with red,' he wrote in his diary. The barricade at the heart of the novel and the musical is actually a scene from the savagely repressed uprising of June 1848. Hugo had just been elected to the National Assembly as a right-wing moderate. When the rioting broke out, he fought with the forces of law and order against the insurgents, whom he considered innocent but misguided. These were the starving unemployed of the Paris slums, the malodorous and degraded masses that polite society called 'les misérables.' He took prisoners and was directly responsible for deaths and deportations. Tormented over his culpability, he had a crise de conscience and joined the socialist opposition to the dictatorship of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. Hugo became the mascot and inspiration of liberation movements in Greece and Italy and throughout Central and South America, so it is fitting that the musical's opening and concluding song, 'Do You Hear the People Sing?' has been chanted in this century by antigovernment protesters in China, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Belarus. Less obviously appropriate is the adoption of Les Mis by Trump and the MAGA movement. No artistic genre is the exclusive property of one faction. As the Trump administration demonstrates, forms of moral discourse evolved by left-wing thinkers can serve the purposes of right-wing ideologues. The novel and the musical both have roots in popular 19th-century entertainment—vaudevilles, comic operas, and newspaper serials. Both were sneered at by middle-class reviewers and adored by the public. The MAGA reading of Les Misérables is just the latest example of its populist appeal. It also typifies the volatile nature of political buzzwords. [Read: Trump's Kennedy Center debut: 'Les Mis' and six-figure checks] Misérables was an insult that French insurgents picked up and brandished as a banner. By the same process, after Hillary Clinton called Trump's supporters 'deplorables' during the 2016 election campaign, her dismissive term inspired the digital backdrop of a Trump rally in Miami: Under the words les deplorables, a doctored image from the musical showed a crowd storming a barricade, waving the French Tricolor and the Stars and Stripes. That evening, the crowd sang a MAGA version of 'Do You Hear the People Sing?' In 2025, the U.S. Army Chorus sang this appropriated anthem of popular revolt at the White House Governors Ball. Hugo would likely have been repelled and fascinated by Trump's demagoguery, his rambling mendacity, his grammatically illogical but easy-to-follow oratory. The writer might have been reminded of Napoleon III, who hovers in the background of the novel as a sinister, clownish figure. Two significant differences are that Napoleon III had a long-standing interest in justice, and that he was never envious of Hugo's fame. After granting him and his fellow outcasts amnesty in 1859, Napoleon III lamented the great man's decision to remain in exile. In 1862, he allowed Les Misérables to be advertised and sold in France, leading his government to review its penal and industrial legislation and to concern itself with the exploitation of women and orphans, as well as the education of the poor. Trump's attacks on universities, the arts, and free expression increase the likelihood that any future American equivalent of Les Misérables will also have to be written in exile. But none of this knotty history need spoil Chairman Trump's triumph when he sits in the royal box at the Kennedy Center and hears the people sing for his pleasure. Article originally published at The Atlantic


Atlantic
11 hours ago
- Atlantic
What Victor Hugo Would Make of Trump
On February 7, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts suffered a presidential coup. Donald Trump filled its board of trustees with loyalists and declared himself its 'amazing Chairman.' On June 11, he is set to celebrate the dawn of what he has called a 'Golden Age in Arts and Culture' by attending a Kennedy Center performance of one of his favorite musicals, the globally popular adaptation of Victor Hugo's epic novel Les Misérables. Several cast members plan to boycott the opening. Perhaps they find it strange or even disconcerting that Trump is a big fan of Les Mis. Having declared of his Kennedy Center, 'It's not going to be woke,' why would he enjoy a tale in which the official victimization of society's underdogs is contrasted with the civilizing power of love, charity, and forgiveness? The term misérables can translate roughly to 'the wretched,' 'the dirt poor,' or even 'the scum of the Earth.' The frequent Trump epithet losers would be a suitably pejorative modern equivalent. This despised underclass is pitted against a punitive regime that honors bullies, sycophants, and plutocrats. They are not the sort of people who might expect compassion and understanding from the current administration. I find the gaudy, mass-market musical's appeal to Trump ironic but not surprising. Since it premiered on London's West End in 1985, the show, with its rousing anthems and its tear-jerking tale of victory over oppression, has thrilled more than 100 million people. We know that Trump has a weakness for bombastic 1980s musicals, and Les Mis is certainly that. Having spent four years writing a biography of Hugo, I can't help but find it a sweetened, antiseptic version of his weird, digressive underworld of moral and literal sewers. The original book would surely bamboozle and exasperate Trump if he ever undertook the journey through its 1,500 pages. The author himself wouldn't seem to hold much appeal for the leader of the MAGA movement. The president mentioned Hugo in 2018 at a White House dinner for Emmanuel Macron and the French delegation: 'This is the divine flame, which Victor Hugo wrote that 'evil can never wholly extinguish,' and which 'good can make to glow with splendor.'' Trump was referring to the shared military glories of France and the United States from the American Revolution through the Second World War. In fact, the words were taken from a description of the central character of Les Misérables, destitute following his conviction for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's starving children. The narrator wonders whether Jean Valjean's soul has been destroyed, or whether an immortal 'spark' (not 'flame') has survived his dehumanization by a vindictive justice system. When Les Misérables was published in 1862, Hugo was an outcast. The founder of two distinct periods of Romanticism, he was the world's most famous living writer and an international symbol of freedom and democracy. By then, at the age of 60, he had spent 10 years in exile after opposing the coup d'état led by Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, the self-crowned emperor of France who reigned as Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870. Hugo, as a refugee in the Channel Islands, was an embarrassment to the British government. The intelligence services of France and the United Kingdom considered him a socialist menace. Spies reported his dealings with suspected immigrant terrorists. His diatribe against ' Napoléon le Petit ' was smuggled across the English Channel in walking sticks, sardine tins, and women's underwear. Miniature copies were concealed in souvenir plaster busts of Napoleon III. The exiled poet was criticized for his arrogant attempts to influence British and American foreign policy. He was mocked for his poor English and his wild appearance, as he recalled in his notebooks: 'To the English, I am shoking, excentric and improper '; 'I oppose the death penalty, which is not respectable'; 'I am an exile, which is repellent, and on the losing side, which is infamous.' I would venture to say that Hugo would not be made welcome in the Oval Office today: 'I look like a workman,' he wrote, and 'I fail to wear my tie in the correct fashion.' Les Misérables is one of the last universally read masterpieces in Western literature. In its own day, it was as popular as its musical adaptation would be in the next century. In France, it was bought even by people who had never learned to read. It was devoured by soldiers in the trenches of the American Civil War. Like all great works of art, it has a mind and momentum of its own. This ostensibly simple tale contains labyrinthine complexities and contradictions. Hugo had been a monarchist in his youth and then became a moderate liberal. At the time of the 1832 revolt, which takes up almost one-fifth of Les Misérables, he was a property-owning family man firmly opposed to violent protest. 'We should not allow barbarians to bespatter our flag with red,' he wrote in his diary. The barricade at the heart of the novel and the musical is actually a scene from the savagely repressed uprising of June 1848. Hugo had just been elected to the National Assembly as a right-wing moderate. When the rioting broke out, he fought with the forces of law and order against the insurgents, whom he considered innocent but misguided. These were the starving unemployed of the Paris slums, the malodorous and degraded masses that polite society called ' les misérables.' He took prisoners and was directly responsible for deaths and deportations. Tormented over his culpability, he had a crise de conscience and joined the socialist opposition to the dictatorship of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. Hugo became the mascot and inspiration of liberation movements in Greece and Italy and throughout Central and South America, so it is fitting that the musical's opening and concluding song, 'Do You Hear the People Sing?' has been chanted in this century by antigovernment protesters in China, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Belarus. Less obviously appropriate is the adoption of Les Mis by Trump and the MAGA movement. No artistic genre is the exclusive property of one faction. As the Trump administration demonstrates, forms of moral discourse evolved by left-wing thinkers can serve the purposes of right-wing ideologues. The novel and the musical both have roots in popular 19th-century entertainment—vaudevilles, comic operas, and newspaper serials. Both were sneered at by middle-class reviewers and adored by the public. The MAGA reading of Les Misérables is just the latest example of its populist appeal. It also typifies the volatile nature of political buzzwords. Misérables was an insult that French insurgents picked up and brandished as a banner. By the same process, after Hillary Clinton called Trump's supporters 'deplorables' during the 2016 election campaign, her dismissive term inspired the digital backdrop of a Trump rally in Miami: Under the words les deplorables, a doctored image from the musical showed a crowd storming a barricade, waving the French Tricolor and the Stars and Stripes. That evening, the crowd sang a MAGA version of 'Do You Hear the People Sing?' In 2025, the U.S. Army Chorus sang this appropriated anthem of popular revolt at the White House Governors Ball. Hugo would likely have been repelled and fascinated by Trump's demagoguery, his rambling mendacity, his grammatically illogical but easy-to-follow oratory. The writer might have been reminded of Napoleon III, who hovers in the background of the novel as a sinister, clownish figure. Two significant differences are that Napoleon III had a long-standing interest in justice, and that he was never envious of Hugo's fame. After granting him and his fellow outcasts amnesty in 1859, Napoleon III lamented the great man's decision to remain in exile. In 1862, he allowed Les Misérables to be advertised and sold in France, leading his government to review its penal and industrial legislation and to concern itself with the exploitation of women and orphans, as well as the education of the poor. Trump's attacks on universities, the arts, and free expression increase the likelihood that any future American equivalent of Les Misérables will also have to be written in exile. But none of this knotty history need spoil Chairman Trump's triumph when he sits in the royal box at the Kennedy Center and hears the people sing for his pleasure.