London fashion week may have grown up in recent seasons but it has not lost its sense of fun. That was the message on the catwalks on Tuesday as mundane objects, such as typewriters, coat hangers and Quality Street chocolates, took centre stage.
At the Mary Katrantzou show the designer elevated everyday items to couture status. A print of a bathtub, its foam bubbles made in relief from encrusted pearls, appeared on an Elizabethan-inspired, high-necked silk top. Teaspoons made up the repeat print on a peplum while an old-fashioned rotary telephone dial print decorated a stiff silk cape. Matching silk trousers completed the look.
As quirky as it all sounds, the result was far from silly. This collection, as the designer explained backstage, was about "celebrating the beauty in the everyday" and "elevating the mundane to the sublime". Hence the prints being realised in the form of peplums, bouncy bustles and chiffon capes. These are cuts borrowed from couture and although the prints may have been unexpected the results were incredible, ranking the show among the best of the week.
One pencil skirt stood out. Embroidered with hundreds of real yellow HB pencils, this "pencil-pencil" skirt was complemented by a top with the more traditional embellishment of Swarovski crystals. The skirt was embroidered by the French haute couture house Lesage and was the first time the specialists had worked with a London fashion week designer. Where they surprised by the pencils? "They were very intrigued," said Katrantzou.
The Central Saint Martin's print graduate is fast gaining a reputation as the queen of digital prints with a penchant for dramatic peplums and bustles. Tuesday's collection highlighted the fact that this is a growing brand with enormous potential and international reach. Backstage, major international buyers clamoured to congratulate her.
To execute such mundane inspirations with taste and refinement, rather than with an amateurish nudge nudge geddit wink, takes real class, which Katrantzou has in spades.
Anya Hindmarch, the handbag maestro who has built a successful accessories empire over the past 24 years said she was thinking a lot about Quality Street chocolates ahead of her debut show. The presentation was camp, theatrical and excellent fun.
The catwalk scene was set up as a Willy Wonka-inspired toy factory. Workers in overalls and Hilda Ogden-style floral turbans with cigarettes hanging from the corners of their mouths served cups of tea before the show began. Ferris wheels turned, conveyor belts with glittery handbags boxed up like retro Barbie dolls trundled past the front row, while clutch bags lit up in the hands of white-gloved puppeteers. As the show ended a curtain dropped to reveal the designer – mad professor-like – cycling on a bike that powered the factory machinery.
This exuberant show was the direct result of Hindmarch recently appointing a chief executive to concentrate on the business side of her eponymous brand, leaving the designer free to focus on the creative side. Or as she put it recently, Hindmarch is now free to "to find true north for the brand". Something which is all too often lost from sight in a day filled with board meetings and strategy planning.
Creatively, this was a no-holds-barred show, ending with conveyor belts tipping thousands of Quality Street chocolates out at the surprisingly greedy audience. It intentionally evoked the sense of being a child looking at Christmas presents in a department store window. "I wanted to capture that sense of excitement," said the designer backstage, "because accessories are all about excitement for me".
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2012
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