Designer: Falguni & Shane Peacock
Whilst other collections sought to convey an austere mood brought on by the recession, Falguni & Shane Peacock's feast for the eye show, continued to proclaimed the couples flair for textures, embellishment, prints and colours — first seen at their debut LFW show.
Thank goodness it wasn't a 'for one season only' fluke. A welcome alleviation to the banality of some of the collections, the pair demonstrated that vibrant prints can work just as well in A/W '09 as in S/S. With blink or you'll miss it details on dresses, the pair used classic flattering shapes and worked their magic all over them. Red and black colour ways were blended into a backdrop that served as the landscape for beautiful embellishment, that crisscrossed its way in vertical panels along the length of dresses.
Asymmetric evening dresses had an operatic feel with plunging necklines, pleats and vents, enveloping and swirling around the body.
Maxi dresses (in red) fused muted rainbow stripes — with grey, black and white; to tone down a staple usually seen in summer collections. Cute cocktail dresses were given either an on trend fringe skirt or harlequin sequin hem, for a modern yet girly look. A beautifully crafted evening coat in the most flattering of cocoon shapes, seemed to capture the rising sun and the parched terrain of Africa, in its pattern.
Designer: Modernist Modernist chose to take design refuge in nature for their A/W '09 collection aptly entitled Exotic.
The plumes of exotic birds and the delicate assimilation of flowering petals, were ingeniously worked onto jackets and dresses to produce their very own piece of fashion genesis.
Continuing to look to nature and all its regeneration qualities, life ever lasting provided the emanating theme that managed to assist Andrew Jones and Abdul Koroma from dwelling in the negative territory of the credit crunch.
Using their characteristic love of contrasts pushed their abilities to the extreme, with precious skins like crocodile spliced with cashmere, silk gazaar, elastic and goat; to create a textural feast of the natural versus the manmade. Jackets possessed razor cut structured shapes that proposed a streamlined silhouette saturated with couture overtones.
As though to enforce the notion that man could never surpass anything that is made by nature, the duo included a homage to its greatness, a stunning silk evening dress in emerald green.
Designer: Qasimi Qasimi's quintessential English garden displayed a macabre theme, that included a brief education on the best of British models who served as this rare garden's flowers.
Erin O'Connor, Yasmine Le Bon and Jacquetta Wheeler (to name a few) provided the only colour to a palette that never deviated from black.
Another collection that showed a historical tour through the ages, Qasimi's evening wear consisted of Tudor and Versailles inspired ball gowns, Victoriana fur trim dress and roaring 20's satin dress.
A simply knee length dress (consisting of drapes) and a trouser suit, were the only pieces to indicate the collection was conceived in the 21st century.
Fabric tones, cut, draping, folds and pleats; went some way into lifting the sombre overtones of a collection, that evidently was mourning the world's financial predicament.
