Francesca Fearon sums up what she has been watching on the catwalks at this year's London Fashion Week
After a slow start, this year's London Fashion Week has started to deliver some of the buzz and raw creativity for which it is reputed.
Collections from avant gardiste Hamish Morrow and Julien Macdonald, the man who wants to be Britain's answer to Versace, began to spin that London magic at the weekend.
This season, London Fashion Week finds itself in the unusual position of launching the international show circuit.
The traditional schedule begins in mid-September in New York, then moves to London, Milan and Paris. This year the mayor of New York asked the British if they would swap dates so the American fashion industry could mark the anniversary of September 11th.
It was hard to refuse and after weeks of intense negotiations the British agreed, although there was concern among some designers that fewer media people and buyers would turn up.
"We obviously had to change dates and I felt it was absolutely the right thing to do as, at the end of the day, it is only fashion," says John Rocha, the Irish-based designer who shows on the London catwalk.
"It has been more difficult to get the models over from New York," he said, but he was pleased that "the buyers have been turning up".
Buyers from Barneys, Bergdorf Goodman and Bloomingdales, in their gratitude, made the trip across the Atlantic, and visibly perked up with the razzmatazz of Julien Macdonald, whose Vegas-style show starring Naomi Campbell produced that essential shot of adrenaline.
Brightly printed chiffon dresses revealing lots of leg, tiny suits with micro-minis, skintight leather with rivet detailing and big hair with big sunglasses were high-octane glamour.
What was also lovely to see was Macdonald reintroduce some of his famous cobweb knits, which, in his student days, he used to produce on a knitting machine in his bedsit and subsequently prompted an invitation to work at Chanel in Paris.
One of the strongest trends to emerge from the new collections so far is the shift from the teenager to clothes for the real woman. Fashion from Jasper Conran and Ashley Isham is infinitely more sophisticated and grown-up, with icons like Elizabeth Taylor, Sofia Loren and Anna Magnani coming to mind.
Conran produced jersey dresses stretched tautly across the body and curvy 1950s-style tailoring in tropical wools. Skirts were pencil-slim, dresses plunged low and sensuously at the back and georgette was swathed provocatively across the body.
Newcomer Ashley Isham has similarly set his mark at the sophisticated luxury end of fashion with a 1970s Saint Tropez look complete with turbans, sunglasses and sexy jersey dresses. The mood for sweet femininity, however, is still powerful and collections from Betty Jackson, Nicole Farhi and Elspeth Gibson mixed the softness of printed silk and embroidered chiffon with lots of cool rumpled linen tailoring in navy, white and cream.
John Rocha showed his familiar easy linen tailoring (with puffy hems on the jackets this season) and lots of winsome little dresses delicately hand-worked with cobwebbing and appliqué.
Sophia Kokosalaki similarly built on the intricacy of her slashed jersey dresses and complex scroll details of her leather lacing.
While at times we missed the rawness of designers like McQueen, London still proves to be an incubator for fresh talent.