14 standout shows from Autumn/Winter 2019 fashion month

In a climate in which clothes must have a “message”, especially in New York, Tomo Koizumi’s dresses were refreshingly absent of agenda; a series of huge, voluminous ruffled dresses in pretty pastel colours all fabricated in a Japanese polyester organza and inspired, according to the designer, by “abstract paintings, and the colours you see at magic hour when looking at the sky”. They were extravagant and costume-y. Not many of them were very wearable, I watched the Game of Thrones actress and sometime model Gwendoline Christie negotiate the staircase in a spectacular rainbow ruffled jumpsuit with my heart in my mouth. But the show put a smile on people’s faces. It was pretty and fabulous, and fun. 

Having snagged all the headlines, and the social media feed, one wonders what will happen next? Koizumi, a 30-year-old, based in Tokyo, is ordinarily a costume maker for Asian pop stars and celebrities, plans to launch ready-to-wear as a fully realised business very shortly, previously, he’s been making things to order. And he plans to show again, though he isn’t quite sure where. Backstage, after the show, he seemed almost incredulous that it had happened. On that night at least, Koizuma enjoyed his own magic hour.

BURBERRY

Riccardo Tisci threw absolutely everything at his second show for Burberry, which united the disparate themes of what he considers quintessential Britishness and delivered looks to suit everyone, from the ladies and gentlemen of the aristocracy to the city bankers and the kids on the street.

The show, called “Tempest”, kicked off with the News at Ten soundtrack and an early Nineties broadcast about the rise of rave culture. And then the dance beats started pumping and the ravers arrived. They wore faux-fur coats, off-the-shoulder corset tops, parkas, puffa duffels, sneakers and tracksuits. They were followed by a series of more “grown-up” looks — a beige interlude of deconstructed trenches, embellished car coats, pleated skirts, printed shirts and crystal-strewn pumps.

As with any Gucci show, this was one with many faces. Several of the looks — with their balloon-shaped trouser legs and shirt bibs in ruffled lace recalled the clothing of a clown. The models wore latex tears — like a Pierrot’s. The women carried sneakers, a self-conscious informality. The suiting, pointedly formal and worn with waistcoats and super-wide ties, seemed to suggest that the office look is no less of a guise.

Michele makes no apology for his vision. Nor for his wilder side. But as he made clear after: the masks and bondage collars will not be going on sale.

BOTTEGA VENETA

So, the billion dollar question, did Daniel Lee’s new Bottega Veneta look like old Celine? The 32-year-old, largely unknown, Englishman was appointed to the house by Kering last June. Previously director of ready-to-wear design at the LVMH-owned Celine, where he worked with Phoebe Philo, Lee helped steer the brand to revenues of around €800m and cultivated a devout tribe of female clients.

It was a hell of an entrance. The really remarkable thing, however, were the clothes she was wearing: and it takes a lot to overshadow a woman lowered to earth in a gravity-defying vitrine. Slimane sent out his Celine woman dressed in pleated culottes, a sharp-shoulder blazer, a deftly knotted silk scarf, knee-high boots. In short, Slimane had changed the record. It was invigorating, energising, engaging — and, possibly, the best show of his career to date.

The looks were akin to Celine past — not recent but, rather, Seventies Celine, when the label was known for dressing French women with a horsey, thoroughbred respectability, and its boutiques first propagated worldwide.

With its shearling snowboots, sweeping skirt lengths and Alpine flavours, this last show was a riddle. Were the motifs a final acknowledgment that the designer might indeed have had a sentimental side? Was this his Rosebud moment?

Or was it a homage to Coco Chanel who conceived her famous blazer when she spied a bellboy on a holiday to Salzburg and the Alps? The full tweed coats and ski-slope knitwear here seemed to play on that era’s Thirties tropes.

Or had he just conjured up a mountain, and the kind of chocolate-box vista that has a global brand identity itself? The romantic Alpine landscape is beloved by clients in all sorts of different markets, and let’s not forget the next Winter Olympics will take place in Beijing in 2022. Yes, Lagerfeld was a romantic. But, he was pragmatic, and a German. And also had an extraordinary business head.

The Chanel house will continue as it has done. And yet, to imagine future shows without Lagerfeld’s theatrics seems inconceivable.

LOUIS VUITTON

For his AW19 womenswear collection for Louis Vuitton, Nicolas Ghesquière rebuilt the Pompidou. At the Louvre. As you do.

The set, by Renzo Piano, the architect who conceived the Pompidou Centre with Richard Rogers in the 1970s, was a comment on the “beauty of controversy” and the Louis Vuitton designer was pretty relaxed about the fact not everyone would like what they saw. The show was an Eighties medley of “museum people, goth gangs, street dancers and fashion groups”, as one might have observed from the Café Beaubourg in the days before Instagram, when real life people watching was still in vogue. And it was pretty extreme — like no real people I’ve ever seen.

One model wore a tweed dress with a leopard-print capelet, like a fashion superhero. A pink flowery dress with a bouncy skater skirt, belted waist and a ruffle yoke might be described as “Sloane Ranger on acid”. The women wore sensible flat shoes for getting around in — I was touched to see a late-Eighties style of lace-up with a pinched trim around the toe we dubbed “piss catchers” at school — but overall the looks were fairly otherworldly. I was most taken with a crafty micro-floral cape ensemble which looked like Laura Ashley meets Marvel’s villainous Loki.

With its leather all-in-ones, chequerboard minis and romantic florals, the show was many things. Ghesquière described it as a celebration of “self-expression”. Bourgeois it was not. Nor was it conservative, or stripped back, or pared down, or any other of the buzzwords of the season. As the looks emerged, each one more eccentric than the last, I thought of the brand’s many celebrity ambassadors — including the actresses Emma Stone, Alicia Vikander and Catherine Deneuve — and which styles on the runway we might see them wear in future. Perhaps Deneuve will opt for the leather ruffled ra-ra skirt or a biker-style blazer? Will we be seeing Stone in a Mondrian-style sweater with high-waisted leather trousers and a pair of pixie boots?

But these clothes helped tell the long-held Louis Vuitton story — that today’s women should be modern, always in motion and strong. They ticked all the codes of the brand, they’ll take a while longer to understand.

CHLOÉ

The Chloé show began and ended with the sound of galloping hooves. “It was a ride,” said designer Natacha Ramsay-Levi of this equestrian adventure that opened with “grounded outerwear” in heritage tweeds, Prince of Wales checks and twills, before progressing towards the silky dresses and sparkly blouses — designed to look “like reflections on the water” — with which she closed the show. The collection was dedicated to love, rage, commitment and nature — a print motif showed a couple holding hands, although their relationship is a fiction: the pair in question are colleagues in the Chloé studio.

Ramsay-Levi has faced a few challenges since arriving at Chloé. Her vision has been powerful, feminine and seductive, but her silhouettes and fits have been too directional for some (buyers will tell you anecdotally that it’s been a tricky sell). This collection, with its highly wearable tailoring, easy knitwear, work-appropriate trousers, shearling coats and bounty of flouffy dresses (which have always been so core to Chloé’s business) looked like a conciliatory effort to do more commercial pieces — and there were some thoroughbreds in here. Of the accessories, the bags and jewellery were grabby, while the boots — a kind of hybrid hiking sock and Seventies loafer — were among the best I’ve seen so far.

Ramsay-Levi’s Chloé is a confident one. And justifiably so: I love her aesthetic. But she needs a winning run. The horses were galloping, but this was more reined in.

LOEWE

Perfection, polish, precision, pared down — there were a lot of p-words at Jonathan Anderson’s show for the LVMH-owned house of Loewe. To quote Larry David it was prettay, prettaaay good.

Anderson has had a terrific AW19 season; he already stole all the plaudits in London where he does his second job as creative director of his own small namesake brand. But where, at JW Anderson, his clothes were voluminous and wide, at Loewe the mood was more exacting and the mood was more refined. 

All the blousey craft elements, the “hand” touches that define his vision of Loewe, were still present, but they were more carefully integrated rather than patched through the design: a knitted sweater was woven with an organza skirt; Elizabethan lace panels hung in jabots from a shirt.

If there were Tudor references here they were deliberate. Anderson’s starting point for the collection had been the 16th-century miniatures by Nicholas Hilliard at the National Portrait Gallery. “They were the selfies of their time,” he said blithely of their influence. “But also, I love the idea of something small, around which you have to pay attention to see the beauty of the art.”

Like the miniatures, the excitement here was in the details — the sculpted tailoring, the dreamy coat shapes, and the slightly bustled skirts. It stood up to closer scrutiny, but no two looks were quite the same. Neither were they boring — only Anderson would put a paisley scarf dress with a grey rib-knit trouser and a scarlet elfin loafer — which I loved. Anderson has a gift for commercialising “ugly” that recalls Phoebe Philo while working at Celine. And his taste is persuasive: a Weekend at Bernie’s blazer in multicoloured checks, tricorn Twenties-era millinery and feather boas made for the wild card wonders here.

As Anderson will tell you, Loewe, is doing “very very well”. His empire is building in momentum. And his brands are going from strength to strength. Another p-word — purchase. This was an unqualified success.

ALEXANDER MCQUEEN

For a long time after the premature death of its founder, in 2010, Alexander McQueen was frozen in the image of Lee McQueen. Designer Sarah Burton has worked exhaustively in the interim to honour his legacy, and his vision, and quite brilliantly so. But with more recent collections you get the sense that she is ready to step forward with the business. And with the opening of a huge new London flagship store and a confident chief executive, Emmanuel Gintzburger, who arrived in 2016, things are quickly moving on.

With her collection of fluid tailoring, lipstick red dresses, and silk blouses and tweedy coats, Victoria Beckham’s AW19 was arguably her best yet. “It’s for a lady, who isn’t ladylike,” she said of the collection. “We looked at things our customer always wants, but found new ways to show them. Without being too tricksy.”

The trousers were looser and tapered at the ankle, there were lots of heritage-style blazers and pastel polo necks. Skirts fell in flattering lengths to mid-calf, and were worn with the same scarlet sock boots, with a peep two. Are you ready to put your toes on show? “She might be a lady,” said Beckham. “But I think she’s a little bit naughty.”

Was the show more successful because she’s a woman who understands the dilemma of modern workwear? Or because she’s got a great team around her? Or because, as a celebrity with nearly 25 million followers, she’s got an exceptional insight into what women really want. And she listens to them, too. She let slip at the preview that one of her earliest jobs was working in market research; it’s an experience that’s come in super handy since. Whatever it is, the elements all came together brilliantly well.

- Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2019.