Henry Holland is celebrating 10 years in business. Doesn't time fly? It seems only yesterday that he was encouraging us to get our freak on with Giles Deacon. Hasn’t time changed? Not really. Sure the pace of fashion may have accelerated, see-now-buy-now may have emerged as the conversation (aptly Holland’s Fashion Groupie t-shirts, brought back from 2006, will be available to purchase immediately after their runway debut), and some of the original names punned and rhymed by Holland may have slipped off the schedule and into the annals of fashion history, but really much is the same. Holland’s t-shirts seem more relevant than ever - more appropriate and pithy than before. Fashion loves a quick laugh or an 'Instagramable moment' and these are just that. 'I’m yours for a tenner Kendall Jenner?' Modern. Credit to Holland for, 10 years, ago, preempting fashion’s new agenda - jokes, slogans, surface and silliness. He sensed it a whole 4 years before Instagram had even launched. He’s smarter than you think that one.
But there was more beyond the word play. Holland also showcased his signature blend of flirtatious girliness and eye-popping colour. This season he was channelling acclaimed photographer Josef Koudelka’s Gypsies series, which features images of Roma communities, shot between 1962 and 1971 in then-Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, France, and Spain. Those images document displacement, disorder and upheaval, as well as beauty. But, in his signature style, Holland had looked for the positives, focusing on the aesthetics rather than the emotions of the photographs. Frills, check, injury-inducing earrings and florals jostled for space. A subtle tribute it was not, but Holland knows how to bring the fun. He’s had a riotous time these last 10 years, why would he stop now?
