The script of this London fashion week was written in advance. London in 2012 is all about the Olympics, after all, and these are the clothes London's designers will be selling next summer. Ergo ... well, it's obvious, isn't it? Cashmere will be out, and Lycra in; the go-faster stripe becomes the new Breton top.
Or so we thought. London's designers may not be the one-legged-trousered provocateurs they once were, but they still have a little of the awkward squad about them. So they refused to play ball with the neat concept of Olympic-themed summer collections. Where sportswear figured as an influence, it was in a highly stylised guise: racer-back dresses at Marios Schwab and Peter Pilotto; a satin tennis skirt at Christopher Kane; Aertex-effect shirts at JW Anderson.
London designers will not be dictated to. For all the ongoing tussles with New York and Milan over schedules, there is a real sense of confidence about London fashion week these days. For these few days, designers take ownership of the capital with an assurance that was not there a decade ago. All those fashion shows in disused car parks – in retrospect, they seem like reflection of fashion's self-image in those years as something self-consciously alternative, disenfranchised from the "real world". How times have changed. One of the joys of this week was touring the landmark buildings that designers had taken over for their shows.
The commandeering of the gorgeous Somerset House as London fashion week HQ and the now-regular Downing Street receptions have had a knock-on effect of inspiring designers to hold their events in the city's other famous addresses. So we went to the Tate Modern for Matthew Williamson, the Royal Courts of Justice for Giles Deacon, Queen Elizabeth Hall for Antonio Berardi, the Savoy for Maria Grachvogel and Erdem, Claridges for Mulberry, the Royal Opera House for Sass & Bide and the British Museum for Temperley. (OK, Beyoncé showed in a car park. But everyone knows the rules are different for megastars.)
But if the Olympians are not to be next season's muses, who is? Perhaps the Duchess of Cambridge – so feted by the fashion world on her wedding day only five months ago? There was an oblique reference, perhaps, at Temperley, where Pippa Middleton – who wore a green Temperley dress to her sister's evening reception in April – sat in the front row. One of the references cited for the collection was Tracy Lord in High Society, a character played by Grace Kelly – whose lace-sleeved wedding dress was similar in style to the Duchess's.
No, you're right – that's tenuous, even for fashion. The princess bride is, frankly, over. A mischievous mind could, however, see a connection between the Cambridges' married life in Anglesey and the fact that a new character – the Valiumed-out Stepford housewife – turned up on the catwalk this season. Jonathan Saunders, whose collection was once again among the very strongest, dressed his models in neat, modest, wifely shapes – a longish slim sheath dress, a crew-neck sweater with a knee-length skirt – but the fabrics and colours (chartreuse shantung silk, polka-dot pyjama silk) lent a tripped-out effect. Shirts and trousers in matching prints (a look not much seen in the last half century) made a comeback on several catwalks, while ponytails and flicked-out black eyeliner were ubiquitous both on models and on the front row.
But despite all this, London isn't really about trends at the moment. The British high street does trends so well these days that the smart designers have realised swimming with the crowd is no longer enough. Instead, they have decided to tell their own stories.
One of the curious rituals of fashion weeks is the 10 minutes immediately after a show, when busybodies such as me rush backstage on the coattails of the models, grab the designer and corner him or her, demanding soundbites and information. I was struck by the fact that in the space of a few hours on Monday, three of London's hottest designers of the moment used the same analogy – of telling their customer a story – when we had these backstage conversations this week. Antonio Berardi, whose gorgeous tailoring had a magic combination of firepower and delicacy, said his new clothes were "a continuation of last season's theme of armour and protection ... the positive to the last collection's negative". On his show notes, he included a quote from Milton - "Was I deceiv'd, or did a sable cloud/Turn forth her silver lining on the night?" Or, as he put it backstage: "Every cloud has a silver lining."
"I think of each show like the next chapter in a book," Erdem told me a few hours later after his show. "Last season's muse was this angry artist's wife, this time, it's her stepdaughter. I was thinking about Bonjour Tristesse, about a girl dressing in her stepmother's clothes. Clothes that look sheer don't really reveal anything ... an innocent kind of sexual awakening." Like Berardi, Erdem flipped from negative to positive this season: this was an airy, light remix of the Erdem signature lace dresses and dense flower prints. Autumn's black and burgundy was replaced by Wedgwood blue and lemon yellow.
If Erdem's brand is a novel in instalments, Christopher Kane's is a succession of short stories, each complete in their little world. Backstage on Monday, he told a vignette about "the girl you hated at school, because she got all the boys"; her teenage bedroom, her sticker-covered schoolbooks. For Kane, each season is complete in its own right, sealed tight and stored for posterity, like a time capsule. Erdem has a strong brand – the lace, the dense flowers, the ballet-school deportment. Christopher Kane's brand, on the other hand, is the creativity itself – the talent for telling stories through clothes. They are different methods, but both designers excel in their own way. In fashion, London 2012 will certainly have plenty to cheer about.
