London Fashion Week 2024

The British fashion industry is in gestation. As Caroline Rush CBE ends her tenure as head mogul at the BFC, high-end extravagance begins to show economic shrinkage (forecasting financial trouble for Basingstoke-born Burberry), and protestations for climate accountability from the biggest corporate ateliers escalate (calling for more conscientious sustainability legislations, as ecological degradation and animal exploitation self-perpetuate–and their consequences rear an ugly head), the sector’s issues evidently percolate. Yet, from the landmark strides of blossoming independents and firm footing of major houses to the multi-media installations that occupied the city’s hidden gem spaces, you would be none the wiser to the challenges that are currently being encountered at London Fashion Week 2024, christening the Spring/Summer collections of 2025. They are nonetheless there, rampant, and the industry still has a lot to answer for–but it is clear that lots are trying, as innovation stood out as a central theme at the five-day fair. Still very much the infant quadrant of the major global “Big Four”, known for its roughness around the edges, here is a roundup of what LFW 2024 had in store on its fortieth birthday.

Fashion East – Nuba & Loutre

Fashion East has long been a conservatory for jettisoning bright youthful talent to the limelight as major players, right since its establishment in 2000. Past alumni in the big leagues include dual director of Dior Homme and Fendi’s feminine fare, Kim Jones OBE, and the creative tutelage of Salvatore Ferragamo’s own Maximilian Davis. Now, as part of SS25, hosted of course in London’s E1 ends (more precisely, Truman Brewery; apropos as the defunct industrial distillery turned cultural publicity powerhouse), two voices made an evocative debut. 

Label Nuba first presented the “SIM” collection, which deconstructed a struggle between facsimile and authenticity. A joint collaboration between British-Jamaican CSM graduate Cameron Williams and Cameroon-conceived Jebi Lambembika, their work self-professedly emulates a sort of identity coercion felt by the African diaspora of these three geographies, melding traditional garb with contemporary inflections. Despite multiculturality in urban megalopolis, an attractive quality that first brings one to it–mimicked in the ornate draping of this curation’s garments (which inherently captivate through their smooth flow states)–there is a compromise felt as the individual constructs and assimilates a tangential self to fit in with new expectations and narrow-minded preconceptions. The clothes are an ode to the sculpture of the city as much as the complex interplay between it and its people, and the collection’s cutouts particularly stood out above all as an embodied modification, externalising the confusion carved in these social psychological processes of filtration. 

Then, German-raised, Australian-acclimated and eventual eastender Pia Schiele paid homage to all her aspects of travel in the basin of London’s liveliness in a very different way, emboldening its youth in the skate-adjacent apparel of her streetwear label, Loutre. However, similar thematic aspects tinged the jacketed, blazered and jorted models who stole the runway in furs and silken fabrics, extolling the city’s chameleon capacity to reconstruct itself generationally.

The work of future fashion world fixtures, Nuba and Loutre (pictured left and right respectively). Catwalk photos courtesy of SHOWstudio.

Standing Ground – Michael Stewart

Speaking of Fashion East, hot off the heels of his LVMH-accorded, Savoir Faire prize recipient status, the institution has undoubtedly served the prestige labelmaker Michael Stewart well, who most literally knew-how to ascend basal fabrics to regal status by way of sleek accentuation in his first solo outing for Standing Ground SS25. Aping off the Parisian style, where his award was granted, his sensibilities are more refined than the usual UK stylings (if one were to reduce the nation’s typical fashion week output to punk epitomized, in comparison to the triad of its more decadent, across-the-pond peers), boasting statuesque impressions and angular proportions staunch against the show’s bare canvas backdrop. While his work transmits this feel of cinched, soft sculptural exuberance, cross-stitched in luxurious jerseys, silks and velvets, it is simplistic and loosely elemental in effect. Make no mistake though; the brand is not for the hands of the general public, and the SS25 collection was really a selection of recently commissioned made-to-order pieces. Yet, this does not stop us from admiring their opulent glitz and glam, which bore a throughline of atemporality–like armour for the new age, and every age, clad in the futurism of a ‘Dune’ stillsuit as much as chivalric Medieval chainmail of old.

The painterly, head-to-toe form-fitting figurations of Standing Ground SS25. Images made available through The Impression and HERO Magazine.

‘Everything Opens to Touch’ – Sinéad O’Dwyer

Corrugating the lace of bodices around connection to nature’s green, denim-donned, the LFW 2024 re-run of Irish designer Sinéad O’Dwyer’s highly conceptual SS25 Copenhagen Fashion Week collection drove home the corrosive yet lattice-like nature of memory across a sequence of poetic, film and sonically driven experiences. Particularly, elucidating the formative essence of sensuality, in spite of its impermanence, models engaged in a markedly three-hour long makeout session atop hay. Just as O’Dwyer strives to make inclusivity a conduct of her brand by spotlighting the feminine expression of all figures–letting none fall by the wayside–her partnership with Lover Management and queer sex workers to coordinate comfort in intimacy positively eschews from long troublesome industry conduct, restoring faith in the normalization of ethical practices–something that should not have to be conscious, but natural, treating the body as art rather than commodification. 

Promotional material in preparation of Sinéad O’Dwyer’s ‘Everything Opens to Touch’. All things blur in the haze of memory; cross-strap corsetry champions sexuality. Made accessible through Yahoo!Enterainment.

On x FKA twigs: ‘The Body is Art’

Winding down LFW 2024, but by no means fatigued on its final day, Swiss sportswear brand On showed off their latest athletic array in a most quintessential way: practically, through a dance performance piece helmed by their enchanting new face, the interdisciplinary allure of singer, songwriter, producer and performance artist FKA twigs. Exclusively previewing new club-conscious, sonically Prague-procured music through this creative partnership, gearing up for the release of new album ‘Eusexua’–a term coined to capture the interconnectedness that lies within a moment and its healing power, a neologism of ‘euphoria’ and ‘sexuality’–twigs’ cross-modal artistry exercised somatic self-healing, and the elasticity of the vestments, in motion. It was also an extension of her resident free-form Sotheby’s installation ‘The Eleven’, in which she outlines eleven practices that she has abided by in intentionality (the foremost being “my body is the same body as it was before anything bad happened to it–an utterly empowering declaration, and reclamation of our constancy, as well as the physique’s durability). Taking us all the way to the “pinnacle of human experience”, what a fitting end to the incalculability on display at fashion week.

FKA twigs in movement at the On show. More than just “the girl in the video”, dancing is one of her foremost avenues of expression–proving to be a very brand-congruent endeavour for this activewear company. Image made accessible via Yahoo!Entertainment.