London Fashion Week day 3 A/W 2012

Author - Hannah Young

Photography © Asia Werbel 2012

Today I wanted to spend looking a Street Fashion. Looking at how and if what I am seeing on the catwalk filters out to the High street. So I head to the TOPSHOP venue in Billingsgate to hang out and people watch. One of my very favorite pastimes. Along with having a nice cup of tea. Tea and people watching go very well together I find. So sipping a bit of the good stuff I look around and start to wonder about how our consciousness is affected by these fashion houses. They seem so very elitist once you are on the outside looking in. In fact if you don’t have a pass and an invitation with a certain number of stamps on it (your guess is as good as mine?) you can’t get in to these events for love or money. I had my fair share of this at the end of the day when I couldn’t get in to Pam Hoggs’s collection and waited at the back door like a Victorian orphan at the window of a posh person’s house.  Ok slightly dramatic but the image speaks of being on the outside looking in.  So. The first thing that strikes me is just how nice it is to be outside. The sun is shining, we are by the river and the view is wonderful. I love this city. Someone once asked me which way I look when I walk over Waterloo Bridge. I tend to look to the East, to the Gherkin and Canary Wharf, instead of to the west with the Houses of Parliament, and apparently I passed the “being a proper Londoner” test. I was very pleased. If he had given me a certificate I would have put it on the wall.  I’m looking at the river and watching the people passing and I notice my first pair of Dr Martens of the day. Black patent. 8 eyelets. Classic. Lovely. Like seeing a familiar friend. Then I notice more and more of them. In pony skin. In pink. As a shoe. In white patent. Dr Martens are having a come back. The word is on the street. Ok, they never really went away but they haven’t been so prevalent at the heart of the fashion world for a long time. This always bemused me. We’ve had to live through the grim age of the Crocs before we remembered what we have always known …That Dr Martens are the BEST practical-slash-fashionable shoe you can EVER buy. An investment. Part of our cultural heritage. Truly something that never dates.

I notice a group of students sitting on a wall. One of them is wearing DM’s. Sofia Liam and Danny are fashion students from Middlesex and utterly charming. Danny is the one with the DM’s (of the black leather simple shoe variety). He tells me that his father was a Punk rocker, so was his Brother but in a futile rebellious way Danny had waited until just 4 months ago before he got his first pair of DM’s! Now he can’t imagine being without them. He explains how getting a pair of DM’s is like a rites of passage and I understand what he means. It’s like your first kiss or your first drag on a cigarette or your first bra. Seminal moments. Oh I am feeling so very British, and so very much a Londoner, and this is what fashion can do for us. When a Brand really works it makes us feel comfortable, at home, familiar. If that Brand were a person we would really like that person. Dr Martens would be a gorgeous friend from University, from the old days, with whom who you could talk rubbish and art and everything in between over a pint. He would be called Martin of course. 

TOPSHOP is another Brand that has the same familiar feeling. If TOPSHOP were a person I think it would be a woman called Bobby who is bright, vivacious and eats exactly what she wants and never worries about stupid things like putting on weight or paying off her student loan. She lives in the moment. She can keep secrets too.  Walking into the TOPSHOP space is brilliant. It is white and bright, open and airy and friendly. Accessible. There is amazing food and champagne and apple juice (Bobby knows how to look after her friends) this is a place where fashion doesn’t feel elitist. You can see that ethos everywhere you look. There is no “front row” as the catwalk loops back on it’s self so the seating is arranged with multiple front rows. The staff are friendly. Harriet who is working on the T-shirt collection spends time talking me through the collection. To mark 10 years since TOPSHOP launched NEWGEN in which they collaborate with young designers, they have launched a range of T-shirts designed by some of their star players. Holly Fulton’s geometric tower block (which I so lusted over when TOPSHOP launched her jersey dresses) Erdem’s prettiest Delft China print with a peter pan collar, Jonathan Saunder’s Graphic print on black.  They all look familiar. TOPSHOP have raised our awareness of burgeoning young talent from our streets and fed it straight back to us. Now that is a cause for celebration! I grab another glass of the bubbly stuff and consider buying a pretty Mary Katrantzou T; it would look fabulous with my black skinnies. The cost? £30. £7 of which goes direct to CENTREPOINT, a charity supporting young homeless people. TOPSHOP has got it right on some many levels. It is truly a fashion house that looks outwards, that realises it has a social responsibility, in fact any art form does. It also realises that what they are promoting should fit our needs, our budgets, and should be made from our talents and tastes.

I seat myself there for Louise Gray’s collection. Inspired. They are playing early Madonna. Even better. The collection is put together brilliantly. The styling is amazing. The girls come out with crazy headdresses, like rays of sunshine or shocking vertical plumes. The make-up is fierce. The boots are fiercer. Made of patent leather or latex with killer heels. The clash of pattern on pattern, silk on top of wool, t-shirts on top of bras is intoxicating. My favorite outfit was a 70’s designed blouse underneath a nude coloured semi-transparent jumpsuit (rather like a clown’s romper suit) covered in beading. Accessorized with a red clutch bag. I am not sure why I liked it so much. It was just wild and looked like so much fun to wear.

I left the space feeling really happy and giggly. My eyes trained on the glorious mix of pattern and texture and colour amongst the people on the street. I notice tweed and appliquéd jumpers, sludgy autumnal colours, then a shock of pink hair and a slash of red lips. A woman dressed entirely in black apart from her white peter pan colour and red necktie and lipstick. Amazing knitwear. Mostly second hand.  My friend Nat is wearing skirt from TOPSHOP’s Unique collection made of parachute silk which blows up every time a gust of wind picks up and underneath a pair of wooly shorts to save the embarrassment. She has had the shorts for years she says. Everyone should own a pair because they are SO useful. I feel certain my wardrobe needs a pair now. A young man who looks like a 6ft tall milky bar kid is head to toe in electric blue, finished off with a pair of cream brogues. Every now and again I see a touch of the spring appearing. A lime green sweater, a yellow rimmed pair of glasses. Spring time. New Beginnings.  I feel an overwhelming happiness to be part of this colourful world and happy to take a fresh look and what is all around me. Thank you day 3.