Show Report
We waited and waited for the earth to move and the season to suddenly dovetail into place, and it simply didn't happen.
Out of all London designers, Christopher Kane is the trend-setter, the designer others looks to consolidate the season's key themes - indeed, such is his influence that entire shows in Paris and Milan have altered seemingly overnight to suspiciously align themselves to his whim. Maybe this is due to his singular point of view, doggedly ramming home a point through interpretation after interpretation. For S/S 2010 Kane was thinking gingham - oversized, in navy, chocolate or a rainbow of pastels. Clever, curving inserts bisecting full-skirted dresses allowed him to play optical games, twisting the grain to wind the pattern around the body. Ditto floating layers of pleated organza, placing check on blurred check that undulated and flowed with every step, in skirts slit and slat high up the thigh. Boning defined waists in fit-and-flare dresses, sometimes exposed as external waspies for a slight fifties feel, ditto demure puff-sleeves and piecrust frills. Far more than the singular love-it-or-hate-it decrees of previous seasons, however, this show seemed to have it all: gingham aside, a mannish suit and neat gabardine vest trotted out at the start - terrifically tailored, but leading nowhere in particular; later came decidedly questionable layers of sequin embroidery on Queen Mum pastel chiffon. It was easy to cherry-pick terrific pieces that will go down a storm with Kane's fans - not least reworkings of last season's jigsaw-bodice evening frocks, with whittled waists and sexy sliced-out panels in nude mesh. We've seen these details all over the place, but Kane's sure hand produced some of the finest. That said, we waited and waited for the earth to move and the season to suddenly dovetail into place, and it simply didn't happen - a nice way of saying this collection was a bit hit and miss. Unsatisfied anticipation inevitable sours into disappointment, but perhaps we simply expected too much.
