Sometimes catwalk fashion can throw up scary-looking creations - dresses that have more armholes than a football team's kit, or Hussein Chalayan's models, who went naked except for a long black Islamic mask. For the most part, though, these are publicity stunts, designed to ensure good column inches in the next day's papers, which tend to conveniently overlook the solid, skilled work that was shown at the same time. Far scarier are the moments when fashion reaches back into itself and pulls out some trends from the past which most of us would rather forget.
The 1980s was not a particularly proud moment for fashion. While style encyclopaedias will gesture towards talents like Vivienne Westwood and Jean-Paul Gaultier, most of us have a few too many snapshots of ourselves looking desperate in legwarmers, batwing jumpers, ski pants and one-button suits to take much notice. It was the era that fashion forgot, all substance and no style, a decade best pushed to the back of the wardrobe with that puffball skirt. Well, not according to the designers that showed their autumn/winter 2000 collections in London Fashion Week last week, who almost universally fell in love with the 1980s, pedal-pushers, batwings and all.
Of course, the fashion intelligensia knew what to expect as certain worrying signs had already begun to crop up in the spring/summer shows last autumn. Big pussycat bows, not seen since Margaret Thatcher made the look her own, began to regain favour, while flashy logos, hotpants and big hair all became chic once more. With every other decade of the last century having been mined already, the trend towards 1980s fashion appears to have thoroughly infiltrated the catwalks.
But fear not, designers at this level are not content just to rehash the old ideas without adding their own signature, and there is something about the 2000 version of the 1980s that is more chic, wearable, sexy and elegant than that decade ever was.
The look has been interpreted in one of two ways on the catwalks - bourgeois chic or disco glam. Those looking for elegance should head for restrained designers like Paul Costelloe, who offered plenty of sheer, tienecked sleeveless blouses teamed with wide-legged trousers. Those pussy cat bows cropped up across the board. Ben de Lisi's were on a red blouse over a peach print pencil skirt; Jasper Conran's sexy monochrome collection had long ties fluttering down bare backs, and Anthony Symonds added one onto a black mohair shell.
The blouson style jacket or top featured large too. Gathered in to a band at the waist, the look popped up in peach chiffon at Boyd, black canvas with a white cross detail at new young designer Luella Bartley and in a reworked traditional print at Liberty. Leather is hot for next season, too, with many of the designers featuring slim pencil skirts, cropped jackets or long coats in supple-coloured skins.
Of particular interest were the long, raspberry coats at Burberry, Mathew Williamson's black cutwork leather skirts, which revealed a glimpse of lime green below and Alexander McQueen's leather tops, which were sliced and printed with photographs.
Fabrics showed a retro touch too - who can claim to have seen much lurex since the 1980s? That glittery thread figured in the collections of Clements Ribeiro where it was knitted up into sweaters striped with camel, blue, purple and red, while Spanish designer Amaya Azuagura made long, gathered skirts out of gold lurex. Lame was a big player too - in shimmering burgundy at Ben de Lisi and bronze at Boyd - while Mathew Williamson reinvented the twinset in bright blue and green lycra.
There was plenty of corduroy, too, but none of it was made into jeans. It became a luxury fabric in the hands of Anthony Symonds, who turned some very chunky white cord into a sweet swing jacket, while Paul Smith, in one of the prettiest shows of the week, sent his models pacing round the Waldorf's Palm Court in corduroy trousers and cherryred leather jackets. Sheepskin also underwent a transformation from student favourite to catwalk darling, with Liberty offering jewel-like turquoise jackets and fabulous over-sized striped shoppers and Alexander McQueen putting shearlings over fitted trousers.
The other material that made a stir in the 1980s was real fur, and it has re-emerged as a look, and an issue, this year. During the autumn/winter shows in New York a couple of weeks ago, the animal rights group, PETA dumped a dead racoon onto the lunch plate of Vogue editor, Anna Wintour, while in London, guests at Alexander McQueen's show in London had to walk through flanks of policemen and offer their handbags up for inspection. Fur coats also figured in the collections of Amaya Arzuaga, in long, dyed-red rabbit, and Paul Smith, in bright white.
There is a level of practicality about most of the day-time shows during London Fashion Week - their purpose is not to entertain but to demonstrate and impress. But the evenings are reserved for spectacle and have become the domain of those designers who stage shows and design clothes that people talk about for months. On Sunday night Robert Cary-Williams sent his models screeching down the catwalks strapped onto jeeps like a cross between Tank Girl and the great crusades.
On Monday, Mathew Williamson let his clothes, which were edgier, slicker and somehow darker than his previous collections, speak for themselves. Model Jodie Kidd sashayed out in a dress concocted out of fine chains, and Williamson's trademark beading and embroidery turned up on fine gauze laid over nude chiffon. The show finished when three models positioned themselves carefully over light beams, the room went dark and then suddenly their dresses, created out of silk and fretwork leather, lit up like stained glass.
Tuesday was the turn of Alexander McQueen, the former wild child of British fashion who now also designs for French fashion house Givenchy. He lured the fash pack out to a decaying warehouse in the Gainsborough Film Studios in north London and then tormented them with a soundtrack which could have been recorded in Bedlam. It was worth it when the models arrived, sauntering down a walkway from the top of the building in tribal masks, smeared in red clay and clad in exaggerated dresses of coiled wool, or Edwardian frocks made out of sheer net or fine gold chains. In among the excess, there was some astonishingly good cutting and some truly beautiful, wearable clothes.
Hussein Chalayan staged a bit of theatre in the Sadler's Wells Theatre the next night. Models were folded, wrapped and pleated into their outfits, glided onto his clear white box-set and moved around the four grey chairs, the television and the table to the front, before disappearing just as mysteriously. For his finale, Chalayan charmed his full house by converting the chair covers into intricate pinafore dresses, the chairs into suitcases and finally, the table itself into a beautiful wooden hooped skirt.
Finding a new location is always a challenge during London Fashion Week, and funky designer to the Spice Girls, Julien McDonald, pulled off a coup by booking out the Millennium dome for the final night. This was fashion for the pop generation, and McDonald ensured that his collection went out with a bang by hiring Hype Williams, who has created videos for the likes of Will Smith, Mary J. Blige, and Missy Elliott as his show producer. The result was predictably rock 'n' roll and, being the London Fashion Week, it was just a little bit disco too.
