PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARCUS DAWES
Ian Denyer, the LFW Daily Dandy, on a sartorial investigative field trip at London Fashion Week
The task of selecting your look for any given day is made easier if you’ve got an idea of the architecture you’ll be part of. Somerset House is pallid Old English white, so the gentleman arriving in chalky linens or a mushroom coloured riding mac will fail to make any impression at all. I compose my costume with this in mind and know I’ve hit the right note when, on springing from my gentleman’s dressing area, its vividity causes Helga the Lithuanian au pair to choke up her breakfast Heineken.
Swathed then in navy pinstripe, scarlet hoodie and two metres of burnt orange silk I take to the Bakerloo Line, musing. How will gentlemen designers working amongst all that Portland stone respond to the need to stand out and blend in, at once a foil and a support to their collections?
The Portico rooms are two floors up, flooded with northern light bouncing off a sort of miniature Anish Kapoor installation of silver balloons held down by sequined teddy bears and gorillas. A vast pair of inflatable lips grin across the western end of the room, the stuff of nightmares for dentists with an hour off between extractions. Squeezed between the two, the FW2010 oeuvre of knitwear hero Markus Lupfer. It’s wispy and yet structured, diaphanous yet solid, feminine yet androgyne, the sort of thing worn by the younger Japanese menswear journalist. More importantly for me, it’s all horizon blues, greys and of course this year, nude tones. So what is the creator wearing to blend in and stand out? He’s in a piano scheme, black cardi, black jeans, black boots and very black hair. Up close, as with all monochrome looks, God is in the detail – his glittering white shirt, from a distance so informal, is grained like an evening garment, though it isn’t one. Delicious.
In the courtyard First Fashionista Colin McDowell looks like the First Mate on a tramp steamer, chiming perfectly with the architecture and the climate in a duffel coat straight from the roaring forties. We discuss his nautical beard (mine is here somewhere, networking) and The Cruel Sea, and I’m almost late for the lovely C, Hussein Chalayan, below decks in the Digital Space.
No point wondering what he’ll be wearing because it’s so very dark. He could be in here, mingling, but if he’s wearing black we’ll never know. We stand about drinking champagne and eating yoghurt out of Kilner jars and wait for something to happen, but after fifteen minutes standing in front of a screen without so much as a slide of HC on holiday, we’re going to be late for Osman, my last chance for insight into what designing men wear at work. Fortunately, the LFW Daily photographer lingers a bit longer and gets a shot.
It’s just as dark in the catwalk show space, and in the twilight I find myself sneaking into the front row beside a spiky-looking woman who, when the lights go up, turns out to be my wife. Osman’s fabulous models totter out on jeweled hooves and sway off into the distance, a little bit Manga and a little bit bob-a-job in Baden-Powell hats. How will Os top this off, what agonies has he endured in his closet? Fashion black in here will render him a mere silhouette. As the last Manga girl exits, we wait for the final bow. And it’s worth it. There is black of course, but what leaves the most impression is the baby pink scarf and socks, not so much an outfit as an item of confectionary.
