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London Fashion Week, much like the UK’s public spending, has been undergoing serious cuts. Aside from a roll call of regular names slashed from the truncated show schedule – Patrick McDowell, Aaron Esh, Feben and 16Arlington among them – there’s also been widespread slashing in the clothes themselves, with everyone from Simone Rocha through to Jawara Alleyne taking scissor to cloth. However, what is ostensibly a basic pattern-cutting flourish felt especially loaded at a time when both the British fashion industry and the country itself is being cleavered by the effects of Brexit and a cost of living crisis.
After first cropping up during New York Fashion Week in Thom Browne’s lacerated kilts – splicing dogtooth tweeds, Prince of Wales checks and grosgrain straps – the trend has now taken off on our doorstep. Perhaps stateside it was a mere act of calculated couture, accidentally reflecting on the tearing apart of, well, some of the most essential civic policies in the US. Here, in Old Blighty, it felt no less acute.
Consider, for example, Caymanian-Jamaican designer Jawara Alleyne’s outing, which was tellingly titled Construction and packed with shredded garments – hoodies, layered striped tees, a long, floor-grazing blanket dress and a jumbo-fringed shawl – that seemed to find their coherence within chaos. Indeed, Alleyne has long embraced a deconstructive approach, essentially destroying to create. Where normally he opts for lighter, airy fabrics, this season was visibly heavy, giving substantial form to his scrimped fabrics. “Everything feels a lot weightier,” he said backstage. “I think the world right now is so dark, and I really wanted to capture that energy and feeling in the collection.” Criss-crossed lapels, safety-pinned drape-work and jeans that had been ripped apart and re-assembled achieved this effect, merging gritty design treatments with a poetic sense of calm.
At Simone Rocha, a similarly absurd commitment to desecrating – albeit with polished finesse – continued, appearing in frilled, almost tentacular faux-fur and satin panelled midis. Again, this penchant for slashed gowns landed as uncanny and luxurious, yet also vulnerable. One especially noteworthy design began with miniature bows at the neckline, before separating into ribbons of silk that blustered in the model’s wake.
For those who were watching closely, this trend carried beyond the more substantial design features, also presenting itself in subtler flourishes, such as a denim jacket waistline that had been parsed open, or a skirt that was both torn on the knees and hems, contoured with pearls. The takeaway? Finding beauty and order where it seemingly lacks.
Less surprising was the trend’s welcome adoption by Central Saint Martins MA standout Jacek Gleba, whose hacked-and-slashed MO emerged in open-seam trenches, anatomised shirts and split-thigh shorts. Raw hems dangled from leggings. Cuffs hung on by threads. One shirt was composed entirely of ribbons faggot-stitched together and hung just above a pair of knife-pleat track pants. Arguably, there was a recognition and celebration of the process at play. Here, cack-handed, torn fabrics served as mementos from the cutting table, encouraging a salvaged, upcycled sensibility that ought to extend beyond runways to people at home. “Try it yourself” was the message.
While deconstruction is hardly a new invention in fashion – the Japanese and Belgian contingent have been doing it for years – it’s undoubtedly taken a uniquely British turn this season, harnessed as an antidote to the industry’s growing preference for content farming and viral fluff. After all, anyone who’s looked at the work of someone such as University of Westminster alum Paolo Carzana can agree that the rag-doll dissections he sent down the runway – or a pub in Clerkenwell, actually – were not the kind of handiwork that screams “TikTok moment”. So delicate and dishevelled were the clothes that they felt constantly on the precipice of coming apart. “It’s a metaphor for humanity’s destruction of earth and how they can butcher you,” he said post-show.
While there’s certainly a deeper meaning at play behind the chopped and diced look, it’s also a likely precursor to what might follow on the high street and via online fast-fashion retailers. With terms like “quiet luxury” and “indie sleaze” now years behind us, a hunger for something both elegant yet off-kilter has come to the fore, offering chic credentials through careful assemblage and a welcome messiness, too. The cut-apart look fills this need.
Do we envision Zara wheeling out some hyper-fringed tees? Or Weekday offering up tassel blanket shawls that look as if a dog’s been at them? Honestly, give it a year. When that trickle-down moment comes, you can rest assured that, long before it became a quick and easy template, you’d seen it first in London – a place that in many ways is also being cut apart, only to return stronger and better than ever.
