London’s vibrant new groove

From ‘bad’ taste to royal references, our fashion team enjoyed an eclectic surge of energy on show this week

No one in the fashion industry seems to think Brexit will be anything but challenging for their business – but it has unleashed an almost manic level of creativity. Remember the furore in 2002, when the “wrong” kind of customers were papped in Burberry’s trademark check? Pictures of soap-queen Danniella Westbrook wearing the famous heritage beige-and-black gridwork head to toe (accessorised with matching checked buggy) nearly sent the label’s share price into freefall. The tartan was banned from pubs and football terraces, and all but disappeared from the catwalk.

Until now. A deliriously imaginative show on Saturday rebooted all the usual Burberry staples into a fizzily fresh energybomb: suffice to say, the check is definitively back . And not just at Burberry but at other labels. Checked jackets were the order of the day on the front row, too.

After his show, Christopher Bailey, Burberry’s creative director, reflected on the very notion of “wrong” types. “Dismissing anyone’s style out of hand seems almost inconceivable now,” he says.

With fashion embracing its favourite new trope – diversity – and the unlikeliest candidates becoming style stars on Instagram, prejudices seem to have been set aside.

London Fashion Week in general was a fabulous insurrection of all kinds of “bad” taste (from pop socks to plastic anoraks), daring (Christopher Kane’s metallic cobweb skirts, Chalayan’s “puffball” trousers and Gareth Pugh’s chilli-pepperred wearable sculpture) and sheer palpitation-engendering beauty.

True, there were some discordant notes. Where were all the older models from last season? On the plus side: plenty of wearable elegant clothes, from Joseph’s reworked trouser “suits” and Margaret Howell’s sharp-casual monochromes to Duro Olowu’s printed dresses and any number of dreamy loveliness to fantasise about. We Brits often do best in adversity. Lisa Armstrong