LONDON FASHION Week got off to a rousing start yesterday with a trumpet fanfare from the 24th Invicta Rifles regimental brass band opening Antoni & Alison’s show at Somerset House. Celebrating 25 years in business, the duo, Antoni Burakowski and Alison Roberts, who started out with £200 back in 1987, sent out a long array of printed silk dresses in sunny colours and simple shapes adorned with hand-drawn and painted motifs using brush-marks, acrylics, spray cans, inks, charcoal and gold leaf. It was artful and playful, and the dresses graceful and wearable.
This was the first of more than 60 catwalk shows and 20 presentations for spring 2013 that will take place over the five days, attracting some 5,000 visitors and an estimated £100 million in orders.
Irish designers taking part include some of the week’s hottest tickets, Simone Rocha – shortlisted for a British Council award – and JW Anderson, whose range for Topshop had people queuing in London yesterday. While John Rocha shows tomorrow and both Philip Treacy and Preen have returned to the London catwalk, a notable absentee this season is Orla Kiely who presented her spring collection in New York where her new flagship store opened last year. Her new furniture and home collection will be launched in London on Wednesday.
Notable this season is the increasing commercialism of the presentations as more and more sponsorship and licensing deals help promising young designers to show their collections. It can cost upwards of £12,000 to stage a catwalk show with the bigger ones as much as £45,000-£50,000.
Yesterday, for instance, Kit Willow’s show had six sponsors that included footwear designer Christian Louboutin. Called Dream Possession, the Australian designer’s reinterpretation of lingerie as outerwear using dreamy silks and soft chamois-style leathers was flirtatious and sexy, highlighted by “fetish femme” open-toed, open-heeled laced stilettos.
Zoe Jordan’s collection, on the other hand, was sporty in spirit, with jaunty Mexican stripes and glitter tops. Daughter of Eddie Jordan, the designer gave birth to her first child Eden just two weeks ago.
A trend that seems set to remain for next summer is skinny trousers – they dominated the catwalks yesterday, though Corrie Nielson’s show was over the top in every sense, her narrow twist cut trousers were a foil to the elaborate overblown flower-shaped blouses and dresses.
Irish model always has time for a chat
TUNE IN to the Jonathan Ross show on ITV tonight featuring Liam Neeson, Olympic presenter Clare Balding and Justin Bieber, with music by the US rock band The Killers. Listed in the final credits is the well-known Irish model Iseult Timmons Ward. A TCD graduate in film studies and Irish, Timmons Ward has been working on the show for the past two months, welcoming guests and helping to ensure everything works smoothly. “It’s multi-tasking and the studio days when we record are always so hectic and exciting”, she says.
Hundreds of Bieber fans took up position outside the studio last week “and every time any one of us passed the window, a roar went up”, she smiles.
When she returns home to Dublin on occasion, she’s always in demand for the catwalk, her most recent appearance being at Electric Picnic.
Sparks lights up fashion magazines
DUBLINER ALANNAH Sparks, covering London Fashion Week as acting online fashion editor of Elle magazine, has been working in London for the past five years freelancing for various magazines such as Grazia and Women’s Wear Daily.
Having started with Elle last March, she is reporting on the shows, doing interviews, going backstage and to the parties. She reveals that Elle is to merge the magazine with its website on September 24th and it’s to be called Elle 360 degrees.
An MA journalism graduate, her first job was working for a pioneering online magazine in London called fashionair. Her silk jersey dress is by a young London designer called Mungo Gurney, her shades by Cutler Gross. She's marrying Ciaran Clancy in December and has an online wedding blog on elleuk.com