London Fashion Week celebrates multiculturalism and urban life
The cultural richness brought by migrations across the world, familial nostalgia and the frenetic pace of London life marked the second day of the city’s Fashion Week on Saturday as up-and-coming designers showed off their styles for the season ahead.
Some 60 designers, ranging from rising talents to renowned brands like Burberry, are exhibiting their new designs over five days, hoping to draw the interest of buyers and fashion influencers.
The 40th anniversary edition of the event is also introducing greater diversity and inclusivity in terms of body shapes, ages, and skin colours of the models, as well as in the designers’ collections.
Multiculturalism in spotlight Sierra Leone-born designer Foday Dumbuya’s Labrum London brand closed the day with its “Journey Through Colour” collection, celebrating the diversity of cultures brought by immigrants.
The winner of the 2023 Elizabeth II Award for British Design focused on texture plays, newspaper patterns or monogram patterns on more classic cuts.
There were as many tones of colour -- from royal blue to black, orange, brown, yellow and green -- as there were “inspiring stories” from immigrants.
Some models wore suitcases as headgear, a reference to people fleeing conflict taking their belongings with them.
“People move for different reasons, and when they move, they move their culture with them. And we wanted to celebrate that tonight,” Dumbuya told AFP.
One of the models carried on his back a large frame with dozens of flags of “countries that have been involved in key migration throughout history”, including the Palestinian flag.
It was a political message and a call for tolerance, argued the creator. It’s just to showcase you got to support each other. Where we are does not matter. People’s life is what is important,” Dumbuya said.
“Wherever you are ... Palestinian, Jewish, whatever it is, that world belong to us. It’s just saying don’t just demonise these people.”
Old photographs
In her show, Dublin-born menswear designer Robyn Lynch drew inspiration from her sister’s career as a Gaelic dancer, using old photographs of high kicks, spangled costumes and passionate spectators for inspiration.
“I vividly remember spending all these weekends in sports halls at competitions seeing all the glitz and drama that happened on and off stage,” said the designer, who used Celtic knots and monograms in her designs.
Lynch’s designs featured diamante encrusted jorts (jean shorts), a long line of hoodies with elastic toggle belts and laser-etched jeans with a colour palette of hickory brown, screen blue, matte black and oat milk white.