Show Report
For spring, as with so many, Vevers pitched a rainbow of pop colour.
Stuart Vevers knows how to give a fashion crowd just what they want. Admittedly, at the very late end to a rammed thirteen-hour day of shows, the main requirements are food, drink and a comfortable chair. Vevers' provided all of the above - and he also turned out a bright, poppy and easy-to-understand collection of instantly desirable luxury goods. You couldn't really ask for more.
For spring, as with so many, Vevers pitched a rainbow of pop colour. It's something many designers have been proposing, but Vever's' choice of materials - Loewe's signatures of foulard-fine nappa leather and scarf silk-twill - made the hues truly sing. Imagine a leather mini-dress in tangerine, the surface grated into thousands of fitly flowers and the hem fringed in vermillion, or a pastel-pink hide skirt clashing violently against a chartreuse top in bonded silk-lamé and jewel-crusted kitten heels. It was an odd mix of themes - think Princess Lee Radziwill on a druggy trip circa 1965, and then throw in a touch of Essex Girl eighties with all that disco fringe and a few pussy-bow blouses in hyperreal butterfly prints elongated into fabulous cocktail frocks with ruffled hips. Generally though, shapes were clean, based around t-shirts and those sixties mini-skirts to make the shades sing. It was simple, but flawlessly executed.
Once your eyes had adjusted, not least to the sucker-punch of vibrant contrast, it all made perfect sense, not least when those colours trickled down into Vevers' accessories - achingly wonderful boxy bags in pastel ostrich or leopard-print leather, suspended from shoulder-straps and sprouting neon trims and squiggly, squared-off tassels. This is a shape we've seen all over the shop for S/S 2011, but Vevers' renditions were the best, likewise his kitten heels, crusted with embroidery and glistening like precious jewels. Vevers spoke in his programme notes about joy, optimism, and happiness. That should be a basic aim for any fashion house. Loewe achieved it: what other show in living memory has an audience trickled out of past 10pm with giddy grins plastered all over their faces?
