London Fashion Week puts spotlight on mothers and menstruation – and not money-making

The dismal state of the fashion world – and the closure of a number of British brands – has convinced designers behind this season’s collections to abandon commercialism in favour of personal stories and provocation, writes Joseph Bobowicz

Not commercial: Designs by Chet Lo, Dimitra Petsa and Bora Aksu at London Fashion Week (Getty/iStock)

It’s no secret that fashion is in a spot of bother, not least in the UK. With our darling Matches Fashion in the final throes of administration, Farfetch on rocky ground and Burberry losing sales, the industry has, arguably, never been so fraught. Of course, that’s just big business. Where smaller brands – the lifeblood of London fashion – are concerned, the ongoing downfall of wholesale and traditional luxury selling is making it harder than ever to survive. The good news? London’s designers are doing away with commercialism and instead leaning into what they do best: storytelling.

If that sounds glib, hear me out. At London Fashion Week, which is running until Tuesday, not only have the collections so far been rich with showmanship, but they’ve also told some of the most singular, if not personal, narratives this season. Where New York, by and large, leaned into buyers’ preferences, serving up the kind of cash-cow designs you find in airports, London’s offering has been substantially richer. They’ve unearthed – perhaps even overshared – the obsessions, worlds and lived experiences that keep the city in motion.

From family obituaries and visceral explorations of the female body to diasporic biographies and kinky fantasies, the throughline here wasn’t so much one niche topic as it was an attitude that nothing is off limits when it comes to a theme. Selling was secondary, trumped by take-it-or-leave-it clothing that felt urgently creative.

Take, for example, Di Petsa, where the eponymous Athenian designer, Dimitra Petsa, channelled her long-held fascination with all things yonic, wet and borderline sapphic. She sent girls out in scanty towel-wrap skirts and low-slung denim, distressed across the groin. As for her signature soaked-through-effect gowns, these came fastened with spaghetti straps and intricately beaded with clear quartz – a nod to ancient Greece and her beloved healing crystals.

Throughout, Petsa’s typically sinuous touch guided the swaddling drapery, while bodily illustrations and crimson blood marks were printed across separates. The opening look? Period-stained panties and one-breasted corsets, followed up by a lamé thong cast in the shape of a phallus, pearls dangling from it like… well, you know. To close, Adonis models and Venusian women walked in trains connected with a thick red yarn. Backstage, the designer explained that it was a reference to the Greek myth of Theseus and the minotaur, in which the former slays the latter inside a labyrinth before making his exit using the same red thread he unwound on his way in. Here, it “represents the idea that through self-pleasure and owning our body, we can find our way through the labyrinth that is ourself,” said Petsa, affirming her label’s sex-positive, sensual USP.

Over at Fashion East, as well as skin baring in abundance, there was also another form of titillation on the menu in Olly Shinder’s third and final show under the initiative. Serving up fetishistic takes on male uniforms, the designer made everything from scout uniforms through to cadet-style shirting appear directional. Shinder’s work lends itself to this naturally – he puts painstaking hours into the specific cut and cupping of a bum or a chest line. Trust me, I’ve spent many hours in his studio and that boy takes no shortcuts.

Still, it’s not just blood and bodily fluids that made today’s outings so remarkable. There was also a bold exploration of maternal figureheads via fashion, with both Bora Aksu and Chet Lo paying homage to their mothers in the collections.

Models on the Bora Aksu runway at London Fashion Week (Getty Images)

For Aksu, this manifested as a chic, quite Sixties proposition (bouffant included). He took direct cues from his late Turkish mother, who had worked as a children’s doctor despite the societal taboo of that time. “It was not very common for women to go and study,“ said Aksu. “That was her choice because she wanted to be quite independent.” As such, the typically cutesy and, yes, demure, Victoriana we’ve come to associate with Aksu was decorated with teensy, coquettish bows and crocheted appliqués – these were gestures to how his mother used to add personal embellishments onto otherwise austere professional uniforms.

For Lo, his mother, a maven in the computer sciences, was celebrated in vectorial iterations of his 3D-printed knitwear. What looked like abstractions of computer windows, digital errors and intricate network systems coloured the simple silhouettes. Peppered among these experiments in geometry came a drab office uniform taped with arm ridges and some equally delicate bedazzled slips, perhaps a nod to the Lo matriarch’s newfound passion for painting. The show finished with Lo parading his mother in a victory lap.

Beyond the more tear-jerking examples of designing from the heart, certain designers simply indulged their aesthetic fascinations. In the case of American-born Central Saint Martin’s alum Harris Reed, this came in an all-out French 19th-century extravaganza. Taking his usual penchant for dramatic society dress one step further, he centred his collection with boned crinolines, panniers and flanks that jutted outwards from the body.

Critics have called Reed’s work caricature or costume before, but the camp indulgence is impressive – even if it makes the more refined among us cringe. “It feels very decadent, very theatrical and very aligned with my brand ethos,” he explained of his period dressing. “A lot of the time you only see it being referenced in films, so to do it in a demi-couture way I find really unique.” Certainly, the growing client lists he’s amassed in the US prove someone is buying it.

A model walks the runway for Chet Lo during London Fashion Week (Getty)

It was at Chopova Lowena, though, where weird and wacky interests – what a fashion course director might call “indulgences” – got real kooky. Showcasing the usual gizmos and trinkets that make the design duo of Emma Chopova and Laura Lowena so alluring to Eastend it-girlies and Lower East Side cool kids, the show unfolded like a jingling, clanking freak show. The soundtrack? Howling vocals and the grate of relentless breakbeats. A new collaboration with Asics saw femme sneakers bedecked with keys, bats and metal baubles that rattled as the models walked. Their now legendary gargantuan belted skirts featured bat wing adornments, while cardigans were flecked with spinners and doilies. As ever, the concept was loose, a toybox of characters and ephemera, proving that one man’s trash is indeed another’s treasure.

In a market as fraught as the current one, it’s brave for designers to design with their genuine interests at the forefront, especially when they’re not necessarily attuned to shopper habits. As I watched Chopova Lowena’s models bounce along the catwalk, dressed in the sights of a teenage bedroom – rather than, say, carrying croc leather handbags with waiting lists – it was clear to me why London still matters. London designers do it for themselves, starting for themselves, and trusting that the real fashion heads will follow. The smiles on every attended face were proof enough.