Louise Franklin gives us her second and final installment of the LFW experience from her self-confessed “High Street Civilian” and friend-of-the-designer point of view. Monday was Michael Van Der Ham, then Wednesday morning was her buddy Christopher Shannon’s Menswear Spring/Summer 2012:
No longer a London Fashion Week novice, but still as giddy as hell, this time I made my way to Somerset House where they had plonked a huge tent in the middle of it for the menswear shows. There’s something extremely enjoyable about getting up normal time as if going to work (in a JUMPSUIT – YES A JUMPSUIT), getting on the bus with lots of weary-faced people but in the full and delicious knowledge that:
A) I’m not going to my place of employment and
B) I’m going to a catwalk show at 9 o’clock in the morning.
I‘d been told it would be more relaxed than womenswear but it still seemed buzzy to me if the queueing was anything to go by, with it’s hierarchical system of sorting the wheat from the chaff (row A goes in first etc) and people spinning a yarn to security to get in. Of course Chris’s mum got a good seat but I had to wait before going in which gave rise to a vague feeling of inferiority. At Michael’s show I wouldn’t have minded being told to watch the catwalk from the toilets but now I had one show under my belt I was developing an ego.
Holly Johnson (left) waits in line to talk to Christopher Shannon (right)
Suddenly the lights were dimmed and it began. Anyone who knew Chris in that audience felt a little sick with nerves. The lack of natural light did not obscure the small trembling gestures of the models as well (some of them streetcast) that you don’t get to see in the press footage. Months of hard work, no time off and unbelievable stress… 10 minutes and it was all over in a flash.
More queueing again, this time to speak to the designer himself – even Holly Johnson (Frankie goes to Hollywood) patiently waited in line.
What to do after your friend has done a stormer of a show and it’s only 10 o’clock in the morning? Why, drink prosecco and eat muffins in the Waldorf Hotel lobby of course. Another complete mismatch moment with the world around us: people working at their laptops and drinking tea and then there’s us giggling hysterically and stuffing our faces with sugary treats, already on a squiffy high from a LFW moment where maybe, fingers crossed, it was some kind of tipping point for Chris.
Alas my fairy-tale fashion moment was coming to an end and I had to go back to work and join my fellow office employees. To further heighten the resounding thud back to earth, the sugar and alcohol crash unfortunately coincided at this point too.
It’s hard to experience a touch of glamour and go back to normal – it took a few days to get shake it off. But now I wear jumpsuits.
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