Style notes from London Fashion Week ’22 

Ruhi Gilder 

Taking place from February 18-22, as a digital-physical hybrid event, London Fashion Week showcased the best of British womenswear and menswear. Halpern used its fascination for fringes, Priya Ahluwalia drew from her cross-cultural identity to create Bollywood and Nollywood (Nigerian cinema) inspired designs and Richard Quinn showcased his florals. Each label followed their brand identities. Read on to know what caught our eye at the London Fashion Week AW ‘22.  

Ahluwalia  

Ahluwalia made its London Fashion Week debut with an AW22 collection named ‘From Bollywood to Nollywood.’ It explored the connection that the brand’s creative director Priya Ahluwalia who is of Nigerian and Indian descent feels with both Bollywood and Nollywood. The couture was inspired by the colourful imagery and dramatic plots of traditional Indian and Nigerian cinema. Graphic prints, vivid colours, and laser-printed denim with A (for Ahluwahlia), made an appearance in this edit. The collection is “Ahluwalia’s love letter to the films that were a part of her youth, placing them on a shiny pedestal for all to enjoy.”  

David Koma  

London-based designer David Koma had his London Fashion Week show at the arena venue of O2. Thigh-high socks with mini dresses in sedate black were encrusted with crystal details, football jerseys were converted into cocktail dresses. Stiletto boots were paired with most of the looks, and the colour palette remained black with pops of bright red. 

Halpern  

The brand that is known for creating Priyanka Chopra-Jonas’ infamous bubble dress presented at Brixton Recreation Centre for London Fashion Week. Designer Michael Halpern’s collection took cues from Cecil B. DeMille’s film Madam Satan, an opulent 1930 movie about a party aboard an airship. The ensembles featured jacquard patterns, colourful ombre fringing, ruffles on sequinned fabric and crinkled chiffon dresses. Soda bottle green, bright baby pink, white and shades of emerald green made their way across the dark green runway.   

Raf Simons  

Raf Simons presented his Autumn Winter womenswear and menswear collections, that were inspired by the 1559 painting ‘Netherlandish Proverbs’ by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The show opened with a model dressed in a blue cloak like the garb of the central figure in the painting. Simons paired a minimalist aesthetic with futuristic prints, pleated trousers, slender wraps, a few graphic prints and back bow ties, both exaggerated and minimal hanging down the backs of the models.   

Richard Quinn  

Full skirted floral strapless dresses were underlaid with black latex tops, trapeze overcoats in Quinn’s familiar floral prints were matched with wide-brimmed hats. Kaftan dresses, bodysuits with peplums were worn by models who had hoods of their jackets pulled above the shoulders, then tightly tied around the face. His favoured latex made its way to the runway on a model swathed fully in it, leading a human dog on a leash.  

Simone Rocha  

Inspired by the Irish legend of the Children of Lir, where children transformed into swans for 900 years, Simone Rocha created this fable within the gothic halls of London’s Inns of Court. Drawing from her Irish heritage, her collection featured deconstructed Victorian frocks, ruffles, pearl embellishments, abstracted shapes of wings and feathers. Models flounced down the runway in balaclavas embedded with crystals, swans decorated semi-sheer dresses, and velvet dresses were cut out with sheer panels.  

Supriya Lele 

This Indian-British designer’s eponymous brand, Supriya Lele presented an Autumn/Winter 2022 collection at London Fashion Week. Constructing looks inspired by the aughts, Lele created asymmetrical, monotoned, draped dresses, low-waisted pants that hit the hips with a V-shaped peek-a-boo panel at the front that showed off the wearer’s underwear. The fall collection also included outerwear in the form of funnel-necked jackets, floor-length coats in leather with low-slung slim belts. A solid colour palette emerged in shades of yellow, blue, brown, lavender and reddish orange. 

Vivienne Westwood 

Vivienne Westwood’s Autumn Winter 2022 collection Wild Beauty took root from the Chinese Year of the Tiger. Westwood looked back to her AW/01 Gold Label collection, which featured tiger stripes and a whiskered tiger headpiece. This ‘22 collection reflected the fierceness of the animal, and stripes, in shades of a tiger’s coat coloured the edit. Wide, double-breasted satin tuxedos, tiger-print dresses with matching hoodie, red-and-black checked skirts and trousers also made an appearance.  

Also read:

Designers to watch out for at NYFW ’22

Celebrity approved fashion-forward maternity wear