Day 1 at London Collections: Men


Friday 9th January was home to the first day of London Collections: Men an event in fashion I look forward to every season. London is perhaps the coolest place in fashion right now, full of young emerging talents, who without sponsorships like the MAN show, may have never been given chance to make it. That's what I love about London, the passion everyone has to give fresh graduates the chance to showcase their wonderful ideas and concepts. We'll get to the MAN show a little later, but for now let's talk about one of my absolute favourite shows, Topman Design under the creative direction of Gordon Richardson. We will also discuss Christopher Shannon who I've been loving of late and this season was no exception. So that's it I guess, let's begin with the post and one last thing, I can't wait to spend the rest of January with you all talking about men's fashion.

Topman Design
At Topman Design we took another journey back to the seventies, just like SS15 and this collection was just as amazing. This collection was very hippy inspired and also very appropriate for modern day hipsters. The oversized shearling, the pinstriped suits, the stars emblazoned onto garments, the race-car-driver jumpsuits and of course the psychedelic prints. Boy's everywhere have been sporting the quiff (myself included) but lately we've been seeing a lot of long Mick Jagger shaggy bobs and that is the next stage in hairstyle trends. What is challenging, in doing a seventies inspired collection is because people of today see this era as a sort of gimmick in fashion, making these clothes wearable and cool again. So I respect Gordon Richardson and his Topman team for taking that risk a second time and succeeding once again. A few pieces I have my eye on are the Del Boy sheepskin coats, the black suede fringed jacket that looks pretty cool and that monochrome all in one with rebel written on it with what seems like sponsorship logos is to die for, as are the jazzy psychedelic shirts. The scarves tied around the wrist was pretty cool also. Well that is it for Topman Design for another season, great show and I'm already counting down the days to the next show. As always my best looks featured below.





Topman Design
Christopher Shannon
As for an essentially young designer, Christopher Shannon has a lot of layers and raw truth about his collections. This time it was looking at the rough stage most people in Britain are going through, money-wise. Which is were the plastic carrier bag hoods came into play. For me, Shannon creates amongst the best of motifs that feature on his clothes, the Coca Cola crushed drinks can that read "Broke" and the collaged misplaced faces, the shopping bag's "Thanks for Nothing" it was quite fun and lighthearted but at the same time it was deeply emotional. Christopher also touched on how hard and expensive it is to grow and move your business forward, which is what he's going through right now and also how much it costs to create the clothes let alone put on a show. I love his reference of like the late 1990's early 2000's an era in fashion almost forgotten about, and I guess I just love seeing that modernised into today, the sweatshirts, the track jackets the puffer jackets etc. And to mention he's making a political statement like so many legendary designers have done and I think if he continues creating shows like he has done over the last few season I'm sure he'll do just fine. Here are my favourite looks from the collection.



Christopher Shannon
MAN
As I mentioned in the introduction, the MAN sponsorship show is an amazing platform to host young emerging graduates straight out of university and get them set up and running. Each designer has three seasons under the wing of MAN and this time we had new designer Rory Parnell Mooney, alongside previous designers Liam Hodges and Nicomede Talavera. It's also a great chance to see each designer grow, like previous designers have, perfect examples being Craig Green, JW Anderson, Katy Eary and who we just discussed, Christopher Shannon. Anyway let's talk about this season, newcomer Rory had a very influential Asian vibe going on, loose and floaty shapes trailing behind in predominantly black and navy. Lots of great new patterns and construction techniques and the bonnets were extremely interesting as were the frayed raw edges which is something I thought I'd never say. This is definitely a designer to look out for. This time around, Liam Hodges went from a trip out in the woods, to South London market towns, where he grew up. He is very focused on men being men but his designs still remain interesting although not too forced, which is exciting. We seen sandwich boards from outside cafe's worn by models, some amazing-yet almost Christopher Shannon territory torn newspaper prints and technical parkas with fused plastic on the outside rather than the inside. And finally there was Nicomede Talavera. Which also had a sort of loose Asian vibe going on, only this time more urban, due to neoprene sweatshirts that had "Sucker" written across them. There was also a reference that felt a little too obvious to Jonathan Anderson and that was as you may have guessed, the three looks one after another of the almost same garment only in a different colour. What I did like however, was the "Octopus" pants seen in like the early 2000's rave era, which I also read somewhere the designer had just bought a pair for himself. Anyway here are my favourite looks featured below.


Rory Parnell Mooney
Liam Hodges
Nicomede Talavera

Well there you have it, stay tuned for the whole of January for coverage over all of men's fashion, I hope you all enjoy what I have to say and without you I wouldn't be bothered to share my thoughts with you all so I am deeply grateful for that. Until next time...
xxx

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