Show Report
There was a preppy, upbeat sense of the early 1990s to proceedings but maybe this collection was best kept as an in-joke between Holland and his hangers-on.
Henry Holland could always be counted on to buck any trend for sober, sombre and pseudo-intellectual dressing. It's simply not in his nature to tone anything down. Indeed, toning up was very much the theme of his Autumn/Winter collection, inspired by the colour-blocked, graduated shades of Pantone colour blocks and Dulux paint cards. Holland must have spent the past six months studying them hard; in fact, he seemed to have pretty much looked at nothing else, as his outfits came in a single colour - green, pink, purple, turquoise or black - spliced by bands of white into separate shaded segments. Take for example the opening outfit (on Aggy, who else?), that ran the gamut through evergreen, chartreuse, grass and lime green in a single suit, with long hair kinked to imitate the swatch banding. The clothes themselves? Simplistic separates in wool gabardine, poplin shirting and cashmere knits, although the idea of a colour 'block' evidently also informed his silhouettes - boxy, cubic shoulders, square flaps jutting from skirt hems and everything from buttons to necklines spliced at the purest of right-angles. It wasn't without its charms, or its successes, the standout being a block dress in fetching shades of lilac with a single brick-shouldered sleeve encrusted in self-shaded Swarovski crystal. The trouble was, beyond the first four outfits it really went nowhere at all. Even the colours were repeated, in the same endless Pantone permutations, running through shaggy sheepskins (the Dulux dog as inspiration?), striated Pretty Polly tights and even a brief round of comedy menswear. There was a preppy, upbeat sense of the early 1990s to proceedings - helped by a blast of music nabbed straight from the Clueless soundtrack and a whooping front row packed with minor 'Child-of' celebrities - but maybe this collection was best kept as an in-joke between Holland and his hangers-on. Remember that 'One Trick Pony Collezioni' he opened his career with in 2007? This felt very much in the same single-note vein. In four seasons, is it too much to ask that Holland move on?
