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London Fashion Week - MAN

This London Fashion Week presented the tenth season of MAN, a day on the schedule specially dedicated to London’s emerging menswear talent. Admittedly, the looks on show can be a little extreme for the average male but it’s a city that sets itself apart from Milan, Paris and New York promising inspiring ideas aplenty.

Topman Design showed independently for the first time having previously taken part in the MAN collective catwalk. In the same vein as Topshop Unique on the womenswear, Topman Design allows the high street design team an opportunity to experiment with the more adventurous customer in mind. For this season think oversized parka’s, paperbag waist pants, soft cocoon coats, knitted jodhpurs and teddy bear fur bombers. J.W. Anderson is fast becoming a favourite and this season he mixed heritage knits and tartans with skinhead/punkish twists like shirts tied around the waist, denims slashed around the kneecaps…and fetishist neck chokers. He’s well known for producing real covetable gems like a beautifully cut belted blazer and a chiffon layered cable knit. Christopher Shannon is another boomeranging hit, offering something closer to typically ‘masculine’ seasonal offerings. Think sports-inspired weather proof jackets, jogging pants and sweats, re-mixed with long-line shirting and some inspired contrast materials (velour and poplin, fleece and coated cotton) and monochrome all-over paisley print.

Back for her second season, Katie Eary presented extrovert, alien insects in hyper-real digital prints and iridescent beetle-foil metallics. Runway newcomer Jaiden rVa James presented a line up of disturbed, top-to-toe leather clad models in extreme womenswear silhouettes and an abundance of buckling. For a more practical take on leather for men, James Long’s softly fitted pants were layered up with well-crafted chunky knits and leather jackets.

New on the schedule was ‘Child of the Jago’, designed by Joe Corre (son of Vivienne Westwood) and Simon “Barnzley” Armitage. With a name taken loosely from children of the Victorian slums, the 18 month old label draws influence from Romantic libertines, Wilde-era poets hybridized with seventies punk. The inaugural catwalk show was entitled ‘Terrorist’ with an aesthetic alluding to mother Westwood’s rebellious London archetypes. The pieces on show were certainly of the more wearable type if with a forgivable eccentric edge; wide pants sat with leather and plaid jackets, ‘Proletarian’ textured knits teamed with wrap-around sweater waists whilst a velvet two-piece suit bypasses the ‘dandy’ cliché nicely.