September’s London Fashion Week was, following the death of the Queen, a uniquely subdued affair. Parties were off, shows scaled down or cancelled, streetstyle peacocking dialled right back. This season’s shows take place in the aftermath of another queen’s passing: Dame Vivienne Westwood. At the memorial held in her honour in Southwark Cathedral on Thursday, loved ones paid moving tribute to her as a woman, as an activist, and as a designer. Her clothes made people feel something, they provoked. And in them, as Helena Bonham Carter relayed in her eulogy, those who wore them felt like their best selves.
There will never be another Westwood. But on the official opening day of London Fashion Week (a prelude came the day before, with Harris Reed’s collection), there was something of her spirit. The opening day belonged to young women designers, executing clothes that were intended to expose and embolden the wearer. Like Westwood, there was a democracy in their designs, achieved without kowtowing to a safe aesthetic. See Sinead O’Dwyer and Fashion East’s Karoline Vitto. With their tight and slashed pieces, rambunctiously sexy and totally unapologetic, they are moving fashion’s look-at-me narrative onwards. And how about Di Petsa? Her debut catwalk show – which saw her engage in a spoken-word performance quite literally centre stage – was brilliant. Those wet look dresses, her signature, are poetically beautiful, as if born of another realm, yet skillfully executed so that they may function and breathe in the real world. All of three of them showed on a diverse range of bodies, something that still feels shockingly novel in 2023.
