CHRISTOPHER RAEBURN LONDON 2019

Christopher Raeburn’s is celebrating his 10 years in business in which many of his contemporaries have fallen by the wayside. In large part, that’s doubtlessly due to the bracing reality of the clothes he creates: functional, intelligible, simple, desirable. But his philosophy – to make fashion in a responsible, open, and transparent way has gone from being a fringe concern to becoming a core part of the industry’s conversations with itself, and with a wider world. His anniversary show was dedicated to Raeburn’s greatest hits utility-focused outerwear, no-nonsence knits, streamlined joggers.

But there was a new, heightened transparency during the show quite literally, in the case of clear nylon puffer jackets, filled with multicoloured fabric offcuts, in taped-seam outerwear and cashmere sweaters patchworked with recycled knits.There might have been other, more visually futuristic collections on show yesterday, but Raeburn was perhaps offering the most Continue reading

KIRKWOOD APOCALYPSE NOW

The Nicholas Kirkwood Spring Summer 2019 show in London appears the apocalypse is now ! Nicholas Kirkwood certainly tapped into this mood for his first London Fashion show this season (having shown in Paris for several seasons), putting on a monster production that reverted us to Orwellian times. The “hacker” was his inspiration, specifically “a group of hacker activists rebelling against a government-enforced regime of banality and fashion monotony. Continue reading

FUR POST-BREXIT

The British government should consider banning the sale and import of all fur following Brexit, a parliamentary committee examining regulation in the sector said in a report published Sunday.

The report, by parliament’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, marks the end of an inquiry that began in April where the committee heard from companies including Amazon, NotOnTheHighStreet, The Humane Society, Fur Europe, the British Fur Trade Association, International Fur Federation, and representatives from Defra, the government department for environment, food and rural affairs.

As reported, the committee launched the inquiry after a slew of U.K.-based retailers some of which had official no-fur policies in place were discovered to have been selling real rabbit, fox and chinchilla fur that had erroneously been labeled as fake. The retailers included TK Maxx, Boohoo, Amazon, Etsy, Tesco, FatFace, Boots and Kurt Geiger. Continue reading