London Fashion Week got off to a colourful start as hundreds of international buyers and fashion journalists descended on the Natural History Museum to check out the autumn/winter collections of 43 designers staging shows over the annual five-day event.
Irish designer Paul Costelloe was one of the first yesterday to show his collection, opting to use his Brompton Road showrooms rather than the large marquees in the museum grounds. Costelloe, the only Irish designer showing during fashion week this year, offered an unusually colourful collection to an appreciative audience. Duck-egg blue was paired with taupe and cream while another predominant colour, olive green, was teamed with orange or biscuit brown. With plenty of wide-legged trousers and calf-length skirts, the collection paid homage to the 1940s, while the large bows at the neck of many dresses recalled the 1980s.
Costelloe used tweed throughout his collection, pairing a pale brown hounds-tooth tweed skirt with a tan leather trench coat, and a green plaid skirt with a wool paisley shirt. Colourful prints on dresses and blouses were a pretty addition.
Earlier in the day, Spanish designer Amaya Arzuaga had also offered a bright palette of colours. She sent her models striding down the catwalk in many variations of autumn's key colour, orange, teaming it with fuchsia, olive green, shocking blue and yellow, as well as more subdued brown and black.
This collection had a distinctly medieval feel to it, with lots of knits that looked like chain-mail and tabard-style tops and dresses. Arzuaga, who has designed costumes for director Pedro Almo dovar and dancer Joaquin Cortes, also favoured plenty of hot pants teamed with chunky knitwear, bright polka-dots, gold lurex, jewel-coloured furs and chocolate-brown leather.
Young Brazilian designer Alexandre Herchcovitch pre sented his collection on automaton-like models wearing maroon wigs that covered the top half of their faces. The collection included both men's wear and women's wear, with plenty of peach, army blue, brown and matt black cropping up in both.
Most of the pieces were either extremely fitted or extravagantly folded, pleated and draped, with armholes in unexpected places.
Some of the more fitted pieces are suede, like a blue-and-brown diagonal-striped sleeveless top or a vibrant red-and-brown tunic, while orange also made an appearance, this time in chunky cord skirts and jackets.