High on a pedestal above the fashion week crowd, a model fluttered her white feather fan in time to the strains of a jazz quartet, the starburst beading on her inky blue silk dress twinkling under the chandeliers. Another sipped a negroni as she grooved daintily in a molten gold strapless gown. A pistachio silk dress was accessorised with a beaded skull cap; handpainted velvet was edged with a neckline of black feathers; tiny evening bags swung on delicate gold chains.
As the grand marbled hall, where Rixo’s London fashion week collection was being showcased, filled up with editors, buyers and influencers, the audience shrugged off their Storm Eunice trenchcoats and gazed, saucer-eyed, at the Gatsby-esque pyramids of champagne coupes, which stood tall as Christmas trees in each corner of the room.
The pop of champagne corks reverberated through this London fashion week. It was an oddly soothing sound, like an all-clear signal after an air raid, to nerves jangled by two years on high alert. The shows have returned to familiar cheek-by-jowl near-chaos, after stilted seasons of masked models and socially distanced audiences. And the new look that is everywhere is not a colour or a must-have hemline or even a hot take on the tracksuit. It is the party dress.
