Lulu Kennedy and Raphaelle Moore’s Fashion East returned to the Palace x Nike skatespace Manor Place for the second season this evening. It makes for a great show venue, but the repeat presented one problem: how to differentiate this season’s runway shot backdrop from the last? Their answer was to buy a suspiciously Manchester City blue paragliding canopy off eBay and bungee it to the background.
This challenge reflects that of the young designers who are fortunate enough to be selected to take part in Fashion East. Its audience is hungry for new impressions, so over the course of the three seasons they typically show, every designer should consider the process a three-section progression: drop in, transition, exit.
Dropping in tonight was Mé Mé, this season’s sole newcomer. As a debutante they were in the strongest position to strike returning audience members as the freshest contender. That aside, their formula for romantic deconstruction generated some characterful ensembles. The fly-swarmed headpieces and net veils should generate buzz (sorry), while the emotionally disassembled organza gowns and breakdown tailoring will pique buyers’ interest.
Up next was Jacek Gleba, who in his third season here would typically be taking his final Fashion East bow. The collection was just as proficient in its poetically piratic dancer vibe as the previous two, but marginally less distinct from the second than the second was from the first. Gleba subtracted color while adding flesh, tracing cut-outs into his paneled forms with lines of lace before he came out with excellent energy for his bow.
The transition-stage designer tonight was Traiceline Pratt and his Goyagoma line. Again we saw the oversized knit polo shirting in womenswear and a short boxy jacket/wide workwear pant/big boot silhouette that, when Pratt took his bow, proved self-referencing. Objects from his Bahamian upbringing incorporated into the run of show included a lifejacket recreated in white leather. However the factor that made you look twice this second time around was the acceptance of the different speeds each look afforded: the models wearing Pratt’s narrow-at-the-knee gowns with beaded decoration and low backlines that furled outward at their southernmost walked in stately slowness as those in the luxurified workwear overtook them with ease.
The final designer was Louis Mayhew, whose mudlarked, creatively scavenged collections have been a high-watermark highlight of the last two Fashion Easts. This season he (presumably) bowed out with a lookbook that was displayed in the showspace lobby: it was a cool way to go.
