Freemasons’ Hall; Saturday 20th February 19:00

Jasper Garvida

Towering heels, lavish sequin embellishments and geometric cuts – Jasper’s AW10 screamed Art Deco and vintage Hollywood. Contrary to last season’s multicoloured, multi-textured and what I personally thought was a rather confused theme, this season’s golden thread through the collection was more than apparent. The show started with tipped-bowler hats and a flirtatious atmosphere by half-prancing models; gold zippers on forest greens evolved to scales of sequins and a more romantic colour palette. Jasper’s love for sequins was epitomized by the last dress, where champagne-coloured fabric squares were applied like sequins, an excellent finale to the collection.

Watch the video of this catwalk here.

I’m finding myself in a rather unique situation here with Jasper Garvida! For the past 3 seasons I’ve been so kindly invited by Forever Better of Miele for various events around Jasper, some of you may remember the Fashion Weekend collaboration, ON|OFF presentation from 2009. I feel that I’ve unintentionally been given a position where I can closely witness the growth of a designer from the beginning of his career, which I’m truly thankful for. Thank you Miele for the invitation, the wondrous front-row seats, and a great time with new and familiar blogger faces! (Kit of Style Slicker, Winnie of Diamond Canopy, Bianca of Fashion Slant, Felicia of Chic In Town, Cherry of Everything Cherry Chan, and 40 Not Out)

How many puns can one make with ‘face’ and ‘hunter’? Yvan’s probably heard it all over his 4 rewarding years of coursing the back alleys of London (and eventually the world) for style prey; well how about this one? Get your face autographed by the Face Hunter! Alllrighty, that was lame. Exciting news: Yvan will be signing copies of his book FACEHUNTER, published by Thames & Hudson, at Foyles on the 12th of March from 5pm. This is a predator becomes prey situation you should not miss, and I’m fully expecting him to be tied up to a stack of his own books and deprived of his own camera. It is his bookbirthday after all, no?

Silja Manninen; Vauxhall Fashion Scout Exhibition; Freemasons’ Hall

I have never googled someone to this extent and found such generous a number of page results, all of which contain nothing substantial about the designer. Then of course, Google starts asking what year did Silja Manninen graduate from highschool and would I maybe like to print out a missing person’s ad… (I KID) No, I’m absurdly behind with these LFW posts, so I’m skipping the scenario of adding Silja Manninen as friend on Facebook and going through a lengthy So who are you again? Remember me, girl with the blue coat. No…? Anyway can I have some information? No…?, I will just cut to the chase by posting what I saw and felt. Unprofessio…what?

Shows at the Freemasons’ Hall was running over a little on the 20th so we had some time to burn at the Vauxhall Fashion Scout exhibition; this is where I found Silja’s AW10. Remember the craze about body chains, chainmail bras and leather cages? Here’s the rope equivalent. But this Finnish-Ukranian designer has been doing this since her student days at CSM 7 years ago, her MA pieces at LFW AW 2003 had been a series of parachute bondage, complete with ropes and body restraining knots. Her designs are now considered as (erotic) underwear, but you can see how beautiful the ropes render the hand dyed yellow satin, I personally think it should always be worn as outerwear, maybe minus the butt-wedge.

(Sorry about the smokes)

Beautiful girls, Ingrid & Elise of Anywho.dk!

Susie of Stylebubble

The sun came out on day 2 and all the birds spilled out onto the courtyard to dry their feathers…

I may have set the wrong tone for my entire Fashion Week experience in the last outfit post, I’m sorry about that. It was in fact marvelous to meet those in the fashion industry who, contrary to popular belief, were absolutely sweet and polite. Although of course, I may have not spoken with those with necks (literally) on the catwalks or crabby editors robbed of their precious Danish pastries by us bloggers. I am oh so sorry, were you going to eat that? and this too? That said, I have not had a single free cup of tap water, let alone a Danish pastry with my press accreditation. I did get a free a floor map, why thank you you’re so generous?

Best part was bumping into so many bloggers I adore – namely the lovely lovely Danish girls, Elise & Ingrid of Anywho, Audrey from Be Frassy, Frances from Happy Because, the Facehunter (who’s dubbed me simply as ‘the Korean’, can’t blame him since I called him ‘Igor’ by mistake), the Garance & Scott Schuman lovebirds, and of course Susie. Of course, I had to hug Susie although I’m not even a hugger, and during our conversation (nervous st..st…stutters on my side) Elle Japan had to take her away for a shoot. Well hot steamin’ dang.

Saturday, 20th February 1:45pm Bloomsbury Ballroom

Bernard Chandran

I did a double take when the models first walked out looking like offsprings of a clown and a geisha. This is probably not new and in fact I feel that a lot of you will agree, but clowns and geishas freak the living daylight out of me. Oh what an irony, yes yes I do remember dubbing the LFW scene a ‘circus’ a few posts below. Although I confess, the makeup did eventually grow on me as the collection streamed out, made up by the extensive use of feathers, because only then the general vibe developed into a fantastic midnight exotic bird parade. The colour palette mainly consisted of charcoal grey with pops of electric blue, purple or yellows; fabric weights ranged from sheer to heavy textured knits. Especially loved the oversized bags and sailor knots with dark coloured ropes, I think it’s time to get in touch with my inner pirate and learn how to knot my victim sweaters…