February 15, 2019 |
Rectangle, triangle, ovoid and other shapes: the JW Anderson show reminded us why the designer is the big ticket at London Fashion Week. His understanding of the geometry of clothes is unparalleled in the capital. And his understanding of the arts: a yellow satin dress worn over black, which fell away at the waist was backless too; the hole in the front dead centre at the chest spoke, surely, of a Hepworth. Jonathan Anderson is a regular at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park; the contemporary home for many of her works.
Since the early days with his own-label menswear line, Anderson has toyed with and reworked the ideas of duality in fashion: switching menswear with womenswear and incorporating each discipline into the other. This season tailoring took a turn for the better: one side of a jacket came with that default menswear hem; the other half was more rounded – a classic ladies jacket look. Like some glorious mistake in the tailoring room; he cinched this new-look jacket waist with an industrial-sized leather belt with intimidatingly large eyelets. These eyelets came repeated on the hems of dresses threaded with soft fabrics and threaded again around the shoulders of others. This idea of decoration continued – had there been a trip to one of Soho’s excellent haberdasheries – as tulle came attached to high heels and gold sequins laid together like chainmail met with soft satins and diamanté brooches to form the most exquisite frocks. In parts, it *really* was like the window of Berwick Street’s Bovoricks, London’s go-to fabric store for home-sewers and St Martins kids. It was an exceptional and beautifully accomplished collection.
Photographs by Jason-Lloyd Evans.
