London Fashion Week had its first full-frontal moment – of sorts – at Christopher Kane. The silhouette of a naked man, his legs splayed, was cut out in pink lace and folded around a black Lurex dance dress. Goodbye Leavers lace; hello “lovers lace.”
“I wanted a feeling of attraction and sensuality in the collection, something sexual but not grotesque,” the designer said in his show notes. The result: Kane made his clothes a canvas for life drawings done in his studio. They looked gorgeous etched in blue-and-black glitter on white tulle, breasts and other intimate parts obscured in the frothy folds and layers of dresses and skirts. Yet more lace cutouts of men and women entangled in ways hard to decipher were less appealing, especially when errant limbs flapped.
The rest of the collection wasn’t so hot and heavy, with lustrous and metallic fabrics as well as brassy color ticking the main London trend boxes. Vivid velvet lapels and pocket trims sparked tailored black coats and dresses, and embroidered ribbons zigzagged over lace dresses like an EKG might during you know what.
Kane has just christened his first freestanding store on Mount Street in London, and put a bigger emphasis on shoes and bags with distinctive embellishments – namely leather ruffles, safety belts and anodized metal hardware.