The best (and worst) moments from 40 years of London Fashion Week
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London Fashion Week begins on Thursday, marking the 40th anniversary of the biannual British talent showcase. That’s 40 years of unbridled creativity, of theatre and performance, and of brilliant and bonkers clothing design.
Hundreds of designers, many of whom became world-famous, were made on this stage. Think of Lee Alexander McQueen, who made his debut in 1993, or Vivienne Westwood, who was one of the coterie of names to present on that first-ever roster in 1984. The venues that designers choose now around the capital are perhaps more impressive than the original tent that was erected on Kensington High Street back then, even if it did have its charms. Relatively young names like Erdem, or JW Anderson, know how to operate with the professionalism of global megabrands. But the spirit of their work is no less joyous, or riotous.
Of the “big four” fashion capitals, London is the youngest (the eldest, Paris, was established in the 1880s) and it is also, any fashion editor would tell you, the most fun. Where else might designers come up with robotically-sprayed dresses (McQueen, 1998) or skirts that fold out from coffee tables (Hussein Chalayan, 2000). Fashion in London is an art form like no other.
Here, we take a look back at some of the city’s defining fashion moments; the good, the bad, the pretty and the provocative.
Surprise, Mrs Thatcher
1984 – Katharine Hamnett
Mrs T looks very jolly at this 1984 Downing Street reception to mark the inaugural London Fashion Week. Perhaps she hadn’t fully registered the anti-Tory policy loudly expressed on Katharine Hamnett’s T-shirt (Hamnett had hidden it under a jacket when she arrived). The Women’s Peace Camp which had been set up at Greenham Common in 1981 was still a hot button topic and this picture went the 1984 version of viral. A million protest T-shirts later, these are what Hamnett will probably best be remembered for. LA
Diana does Fashion Week
1995 – Joe Casely-Hayford
In 1995, Princess Diana, during a visit to some of the static presentations at London Fashion Week, mentioned that she’d never been to a fashion show. Within a few minutes space had been cleared on the centre of the front row at Joe Casely-Hayford, a highly respected but not especially well-known men and women’s wear designer. While coverage of the princess’s attendance was enthusiastic, there were a fraction of the outlets then that there are today. LA
The Electric Angels
1997 – Matthew Williamson
In early 1996, I was working at Vogue when one of the junior fashion writers brought a friend who’d studied with her at Central Saint Martins in to meet us. He’d been consulting for Monsoon but had started a side hustle making gorgeous embroidered and beaded sarongs and silk bags and she thought it might be mutually beneficial for him to meet some of the Vogue team.
A year later Matthew Williamson debuted at London Fashion Week with just 11 looks – a collection called Electric Angels. But they were so colourful, so wearable and so perfectly put together they helped set the seal on London’s new position as one of the hottest style capitals in the world. It didn’t hurt that Kate Moss, Helena Christensen and Jade Jagger were modelling. LA
Spray-on style
1998 – Alexander McQueen
By 1998, Alexander McQueen’s shows had become bywords for a new kind of fashion-meets-art-meets-attitude. So many outstanding moments – models walking through water and flames; the infamous Highland Rape show of 1995, 18th-century corsets, and Jesus in his 1996 Dante collection. But for many, the most memorable of all was Shalom Harlow being spray painted by a robot, an inspired moment of fashion poetry.
Towards the end of the show, the incomparably graceful Harlow walked the vast runway in layers of plain ivory cotton which were transformed before the audience’s eye. Human craft meets machine – this was something that seemed fresh, mesmerising and prescient. In 2022, Coperni repeated the stunt, featuring a tight white dress on Bella Hadid – destined to go down as a very poor copy. LA
The posh model
2000 – Maria Grachvogel
Maria Grachvogel, one of those quiet designers who favours low-key presentations of fluid, wearable clothes, pulled off an unlikely coup when Victoria Beckham, then still better known as Posh, walked her runway in a not very typical Grachvogel dress. VB hadn’t yet reinvented herself as a serious fashion entity, but that didn’t worry the tabloids. Two decades on, Grachvogel is celebrating 30 years in fashion with another presentation during this Fashion Week. Given how few of her cohort are still in business, that’s quite the feat. LA
Fashion meets furniture
2000 – Hussein Chalayan
Sitting in the stalls of Sadler’s Wells, it was clear early on we were in for an adventure. Chalayan, the man who’d buried a dress in earth for several months to see what that did for its patina, was well into his stride by the time he pulled off this tour de force of transformative clothes.
The stage was set up like a minimalist sitting room – a table, four chairs, a flat screen TV (still a relative novelty then) and lots of white space. Models drifted in and out, in deceptively simple black coats, ruffled skirts and white sheath dresses, secreting ornaments in their pockets, removing the loose covers from the armchairs and turning them into clothes.
Finally, one model in a sky blue top and black skirt removed the centre of a coffee table, stepped into the hole and pulled up the articulated circle to create a wooden skirt. Final touch? The table’s legs, which snapped up inside of it. It was fiendishly clever and anointed Chalayan as a designer of enormous ingenuity, even if the industry has never quite worked out how to apply his ideas. LA
Razzle dazzle ’em
2001 – Julien Macdonald
Only a chopsy Welshman like Julien Macdonald could persuade supermodels Jodie Kidd and Helena Christensen to appear in his earliest shows, bedazzling them in rhinestones and spliced lace boudoir dresses. He’d be the first to admit that his Union Jack jackets and leather muir hats were a touch OTT, but this collection was arguably the one that secured him the top job at Parisian house Givenchy. CL
Treacy’s top hat
2001 – Philip Treacy
Celebrity cameos at London Fashion Week perhaps peaked in 2001, when Grace Jones arrived at milliner Philip Treacy’s presentation. She became the show, gliding in on the roof of a limousine, wearing a gold glitter top hat of Treacy’s design. CL
The new golden age
2006 – Christopher Kane
In the six months after 25-year-old Christopher Kane from Newarthill, near Glasgow, graduated from London’s Central Saint Martins college, he had scooped a consultancy role with Donatella Versace. At the same time, he had worked up his debut collection from a rental house in east London – fluorescent mini dresses strapped with buckles, rings, crystals and zips. Versace gave her blessing (and a cache of stilettos to finish the looks) and one of London Fashion Week’s brightest stars of a generation was launched. CL
Royal models
2007 – Fashion For Relief
Cameos from non-models are always welcome at LFW. Princess Beatrice and her mother, Sarah Ferguson, made their London Fashion Week debut in 2007, walking in Naomi Campbell’s Fashion For Relief charity show. Other celebrities who took to the catwalk to raise funds for those affected by the British summer floods included Elle Macpherson and Rio Ferdinand. CL
The alien look
2012 – Meadham Kirchhoff
Meadham Kirchhoff, the London label that launched in 2006, was shuttered in 2014 thanks to what the designers described as a “quagmire of debt”. In its heyday, though, it had a cult following. The autumn 2012 show was inspired by an interplanetary disco, where martian-like models took to the catwalk in jumbo sequins and riotous colours. CL
Burberry’s blockbusters
2012 – Burberry Prorsum
Optimism in London was high in 2012, ahead of a summer full of Olympics action. The energy (and big budgets) were felt in fashion too. Christopher Bailey’s Burberry finales became supermodel-led extravaganzas, and odes to the house’s best-selling trench coats. He hit his stride here, as Cara Delevingne led the parade through a shower of silver confetti rain. CL
Air heads
2018 – Matty Bovan
Matty Bovan, a Central Saint Martins graduate operating out of his parent’s garage in York, burst onto the scene in 2018 with this, his debut solo show away from the talent incubating Fashion East programme. He reimagined grand silhouettes – crinolines and capes – in tattered and unexpected material, finishing many looks with a balloon headdress. CL
Queen of the FROW
2018 – Richard Quinn
It was an astonishing moment when the late Queen Elizabeth II sat on the front row – and surely the best VIP we’ll ever see at any fashion week, anywhere. The Queen was there to award 28-year-old designer Richard Quinn with the inaugural Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design, and could be seen enjoying every moment of Quinn’s floral spectacle, alongside Vogue editor Anna Wintour. Her Majesty remained brilliantly straight-faced at the sight of Quinn’s latex and mesh mask creations, too. CL
Killer frocks
2019 – Molly Goddard
In 2018, newcomer designer Molly Goddard shot to fame for designing the big, pink, tulle dress, worn by Jodie Comer as Villanelle on TV’s Killing Eve. The following season, she made more of those puffball frocks, and emphasised their lightness by installing wind machines on the catwalk, to give each model their own Marilyn effect. CL
New drama
2022 – Harris Reed
New designer Harris Reed made his mark via theatrical, statement silhouettes. His trick is to style up shapes from a bygone era of glamour, and to make them feel entirely current in a TikTok age. CL
Shopping bag chic
2023 – JW Anderson
Tesco carrier bags were turned into dresses in Jonathan Anderson’s autumn 2023 show, a celebration of 15 years of his namesake label. It wasn’t quite as it seemed – the poster prints were a collaboration with Scottish artist Michael Clark. The price tag for a piece? More than the 30p “bag-for-life” charge at your local supermarket. CL
And the one to watch next…
2024 – Ahluwalia
The label to track at the latest round of shows? Priya Ahluwalia upcycles materials into one-of-a-kind and limited edition pieces – her collections have already scooped up prestigious industry prizes including the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design. Remember the name, as London’s start-ups can so quickly become global super-labels. CL
