Discover The World Of Dr. Sknn

Welcome to the new face of aesthetic medicine. Dr. Sknn, in Wilmslow, is an aesthetics clinic which restores the health of your skin and reverses the effects of ageing.

Dr. Eddie Shaffu is the renowned General Practitioner (G.P.) and aesthetics specialist, with credentials of MSc in Skin Ageing and Aesthetic Medicine (MB, BCh, BAO, LRCSI, LRCPI, NUI, MRCGP) and Minor Surgical Skills Certification. He globally trained throughout the U.K., U.S.A., Canada, Malta, Spain and Bahrain.

During his time at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida, U.S.A., his interest developed in reconstructive and aesthetic plastic surgery along with clinical research. Dr. Shaffu established a prominent passion for aesthetic medicine and skin-ageing in tandem to maintaining his G.P. career path. As he gained unparalleled knowledge, aptitude and international practical application skills, he now provides aesthetic services administered from his Wilmslow based clinic, Dr. Sknn.

"At Dr. Sknn, our mission is to provide the public what they actually require for their skin health and overall appearance." - Dr. Eddie Shaffu

Dr. Sknn redefines the boundaries of aesthetic medicine. It´s a doctor-led aesthetic clinic in Wilmslow that specialises in aesthetic medicine, skin rejuvenation and skin anti-ageing, by providing doctor-patient consultations alongside certified aestheticians. Dr. Sknn places a primary focus on patients during their cosmetic journey, through pre-and post-care aesthetic services - including medical grade skincare, patients' follow-ups, and skin health upkeep regimes.

There are a variety of energy-based treatments for the face, body and hair that are targeted through injectables, autologous regenerative medicine and medical grade equipment, to efficiently and effectively reverse the effects of skin ageing and external aggressions. Dr. Sknn also freshly formulates unique preparations of skincare prescriptive serums that are tailor-made for each client.

Discover more about the world of anti-ageing, skin rejuvenation and aesthetic medicine by visiting their official Dr. Sknn website.

Prada’s Wedding-Inspired A/W´23 Show

For Prada’s autumn/winter 2023 collection, Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons made the everyday extraordinary; Anders Christian Madsen reports from Milan.

It turned wedding dresses into daywear

A low ceiling hovered uncomfortably over our heads in a blackened-out Fondazione Prada space where vague searchlights created an eerie atmosphere pre-show. The world was closing in on us. As the show began, the ceilings mechanically elevated and gave room and light to Fondazione Prada and Raf Simons’s proposal: a wedding day – or, rather, a wedding every day. “We take pieces from a special occasion, or created for one day like a wedding gown, and here it becomes everyday. Why should this celebration of love be for only a single day?” Simons said. The idea unfolded in the delicately embroidered and appliquéd white lace skirts and pumps that opened the show, styled with very normal jumpers and oversized blazers, and in the bridalised white shirts, T-shirts and bowling shirts that appeared mid-show, elongated into gowns with trains.

It was pretty YOLO

Between the claustrophobic ceilings and the ceremonious dress, the message Prada and Simons were trying to convey was pretty clear: you only live once – enjoy it while you can. In the same week as Putin suspended Russia’s participation in the nuclear arms act, that idea no longer resonates as some silly truism. As Prada reflected, “Reality is rich. Real life is much more rich than any fantasy. And therefore more important. For me, the real meaning of what we do is to bring importance to the everyday. Everyday life deserves beautiful things. Because every day of life counts.” Next to the bridal elements, her collection imbued the everyday with beauty through fabric gestures and volumes borrowed from haute couture but worked into decidedly normal and practical materials.

Prada and Simons abstracted outerwear

The designers’ elevation of everyday garments inspired a study of “the stereotypes of outerwear”, as Simons called them: how to make extraordinary the pieces that feel most desirable to us as customers. It generated expressions like a white skirt and top padded to new proportions. “It was interesting to see how they could architecturally evolve,” Simons said. “Because we’re so into reality, and because we’ve seen so many variations on these pieces over the years, we wanted to make the effort to see if we could push it into something new.” It manifested in elongated outerwear silhouettes that played with proportion, supersizing the upper parts of garments and minimising the lower.

It celebrated the uniforms of everyday workers

The focus on the everyday made for a collection that lionised the prosaic. “There is the notion in fashion that only glamour is important. I hate that; I have always fought against that. This collection is about finding beauty everywhere, beauty of different kinds,” Prada said. “We are focused on reality for political reasons. What’s important now is the value of jobs: to give importance to simple jobs.” An oft-heard statement from the lips of Prada, she acted on her belief in garments that paid homage to the wardrobes of everyday jobs: codes from the uniforms of medicine, education and security. As they tend to do, the tonal ties and shirts, big square epaulettes and breast-pocket dresses in Einheit colours evoked a somewhat collectivist look that also felt a bit unnerving.

It was about appreciating what we take for granted

Of their study of uniforms, Prada said it was about care: “We looked at uniforms that represent care, like nurses, because the act of caring is a beautiful thing. We wanted to transform these uniforms of caring into uniforms of beauty.” Simons concurred: “These typical uniform garments, connected to the everyday world, are usually seen as minor. Unconsidered. So, for this collection, we liked the idea of considering them, celebrating them. We can give them an importance – because those garments are important, the wearers are important, the action is important. Their lives.” Asked which social or political situations had particularly inspired this focus on care, the designers both answered “everything”. “What I’m fixated on is giving respect to working people – and not superficiality,” Prada reiterated.

Max Mara’s 18th Century-Inspired A/W´23 Show

Max Mara creative director Ian Griffiths imbued his autumn/winter 2023 collection with elements of 18th century court dress – to surprising effect, says Anders Christian Madsen at Milan Fashion Week.

The collection was inspired by the 18th century

If recent TV adaptations of Dangerous Liaisons and the life of Marie Antoinette are anything to go by, there’s something about the 18th century that resonates with our moment in time. Maybe it’s the glamorous escapism, or maybe it’s the revolutionary spirit that underpinned it: the ideas of personal liberation proposed by Rousseau, who was woke when it was still known as enlightened. Placed in a Max Mara context – the epitome of the rational, pragmatic quality wardrobe – those are interesting thoughts. It’s exactly what went down in the Rotonda della Besana this season, as Ian Griffiths fused the grammar of the 18th century with the Italian purveyor of modernity.

Ian Griffiths looked for parallels between then and now

After sponsoring the restoration of the 18th century collection at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation as part of his cruise show in Lisbon last summer, Griffiths started pondering the relevance of the era through a present-day lens. “Was it dry, dusty and distant? Or was it a dress rehearsal for the times we’re living in now?” He delved into the writings of Émilie du Châtelet, a progressive noblewoman who immersed herself in the time’s fashion for natural philosophy. “I discovered in her a starting point for a collection which, from a costume history point of view, was about designing something that maybe she would like to have worn then. But, at the end of the telescope, is something you’d like to wear now,” he explained.

It took inspiration from Émilie du Châtelet

Applying the silhouettes of 18th century dress to the very contrasting nature of Max Mara, Griffiths conceived a look that evoked the contours of court dress through functional and comfortable constructions. “I imagine Émilie du Châtelet would have welcomed a more rational approach to what she could wear in a time when fashion was extremely apotropaic. It was like voodoo: totemic. Today, those pieces give us a sense of romance, which is what I think we’re looking for,” he said, offering a reason for our contemporary fondness for an era of apparent restriction. “When I say romantic, I don’t mean hearts and flowers. I mean going in there and fighting for whatever you’re fighting for.”

It imbued the Max Mara wardrobe with elements of court dress

The fighting spirit of the 18th century was what drew the late Dame Vivienne Westwood to the epoch as well. The parallels between its revolutionaries and the punks of the 20th century was self-explanatory, and in the silhouettes of the time, she detected a representation of the spirit that possessed her own aesthetic – only, with the glamour and empowerment that court dress inevitably provides. Griffiths drew on the same sense of dignity in courtly pannier shapes, Watteau backs and banyan coats, all created with the pragmatism that attracts modern customers to Max Mara. “Our wardrobe today is very largely based on the rational and the logical, but there’s room for an element of something else,” he said.

Griffiths wanted to create dignified clothes

Asked what dignity means in clothes, Griffiths flexed the philosophical and ever-articulate muscle that makes him a gift to fashion week. “Dignity is all about clothes that give you a sense of being comfortable with yourself; that are designed with respect for the person who’ll be wearing them. I feel pain for women who chose or have to wear something that they probably fell in love with on the runway and then spent their whole day or night in, constantly thinking, ‘Am I young enough? Am I thin enough? Am I breathing in the right way? I’m not falling out of it?’ I mean, that’s dignity in clothes.”

Diesel’s “Sex Positive” A)W´23 Show

Diesel’s provocative autumn/winter 2023 show at Milan Fashion Week saw guests being sent a box of condoms as their invitations – oh, and a mountain of 200,000 additional boxes on the runway. Below, Vogue’s fashion critic Anders Christian Madsen shares his key takeaways from the collection.

The venue was filled with condoms

At the centre of Diesel’s warehouse venue was a big red mountain of condoms – 200,000 boxes to be exact. A box had been sent to every guest in the post along with our seat number. “Sex positivity is something amazing. We like to play at Diesel, and we are serious about it. Have fun, respect each other, be safe,” creative director Glenn Martens said. The set design heralded a collaboration with Durex in the shape of a capsule collection, which launches this April.

It was all about techniques

Martens’s safe sex theme came with a soundtrack that sampled the panting of porn films, but apart from the usual sex appeal this wasn’t a sex-centric Diesel collection. Rather, it continued the demonstration of techniques and intricacy Martens has been exploring since taking the reins of the brand in 2020. They range from ripping to glazing but all have the same effects in common: degeneration, deterioration and erosion.

Martens made a case for denim devoré

The show opened with a series of dresses, skirts and jeans crafted in denim devoré, which left some denim patched intact and other parts of the garments transparent. It looked as if you’d covered the body in a giant sticker you could only partly peel off. Martens expanded the effect in a diamanté column dress, which cemented the riches-to-rags premise of the collection.

It was savoir-faire for a new generation

With his denim devoré firmly imprinted on the runway, Martens opened the floodgates of techniques: a sheer dress was flocked with the memory of jeans, a knitted dress unraveled into fluff as if it had been picked, and the trains of gowns deteriorated behind them. For the generations Martens designs for, the look of “Successful Living” – as is Diesel’s slogan – is now entirely deceiving.

It featured teeth and lip prints

Some of Martens’s more graphic pieces included repurposed deadstock faux fur coats trapped inside plastic shells, smocked glazed coats that resembled slime, and textures so stiff they must have been hand-painted. Towards the end of the show, he sent out a series of lip and teeth prints that – the massive pile of condoms in the room considered – felt pretty suggestive.

Alberta Ferretti’s “Purified Glamour” A/W´23 Show

Alberta Ferretti’s autumn/winter 2023 collection introduced a cleaner, more modern and less romantic version of the Ferretti woman, says Anders Christian Madsen at Milan Fashion Week. Below, five things to know about the collection.

The collection was a new look for Alberta Ferretti

Mona Tougaard opened the Alberta Ferretti show in a floor-length tailored grey bustier dress styled with sheer black opera gloves. She was dressed to the nines yet entirely stripped down: no fuss, no embellishment, just glamour – in its purest form. The look heralded a collection that introduced a cleaner, more modern and less romantic version of the Ferretti woman, which didn’t just suit her but snapped her into a mentality that felt ever so 2023.

It came with a change of show venue

“The silhouette is more modern: clean, long and closer to the body. It’s simple but the detail is very special. There’s more tailoring. It’s very sartorial,” Ferretti said backstage before the show. It unfolded in considered surroundings: a nondescript conference centre some 20 minutes by car from Milan’s city centre, which felt very un-Ferretti but also like a blank canvas; a fresh page for a new start, complete with a seductive electro soundtrack with a sultry voice.

It was just as intricate as before

Maintained in an elongated silhouette, Ferretti’s updated take on her own creative genetics manifested in sumptuous but consistently restrained textures – shearling, velvet, various forms of appliqué – that looked simpler than they have in the past, but demanded the same levels of savoir-faire synonymous with her brand. “This is not print,” she said, pointing at a cloudy red dress. “This is all applicated velvet embroidery on chiffon.”

It was all about texture

The purified colour palette that defined the show – dark greys, scarlet, black and silver – allowed Ferretti to really amplify her textures. She did so in metallics clashed with velvet, in felt confronted with pattern, and rich textures like soft and sculptural shearling, intricate lace, and tonal black embroideries that embellished jackets in opulent beads and paillettes without ever entering over-the-top territory.

Ferretti said it was about focus

“It’s super important at this particular moment to have a very precise image and message,” Ferretti said, asked what had brought on her change in direction. “You can’t be vague. With images appearing everywhere around us, I have to be very concentrated on communicating who I am – my DNA – through a very sharp silhouette.” It made for a wardrobe that transcended age groups, and a collection that imprinted itself on your retina.

Introducing The BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund 2023 Shortlist

Since its launch in 2008, the BFC/Vogue Designer Fashion Fund has facilitated the rise of promising London talents, including (but not limited to) Richard Quinn, who won the 2022 iteration; Wales Bonner (2019); Molly Goddard (2018); and Christopher Kane (2011). Today, the British Fashion Council announces the shortlist for the 2023 edition: 16Arlington, A.W.A.K.E. Mode, Ahluwalia, Alighieri, Completedworks, Piferi and Supriya Lele are all in the running for the prestigious award.

With the support of the British Fashion Council, British Vogue, Burberry and Paul Smith, one brand or designer will receive a £200,000 cash prize, in addition to mentoring and advice to help grow their business. Making up the judging panel? Vogue’s Edward Enninful and Sarah Harris, Munroe Bergdorf, Sarah Mower, Alexa Chung, chief executive of the BFC Caroline Rush, Financial Times fashion editor Lauren Indvik, and Burberry chief marketing officer Rod Manley.

“We were amazed by the incredible breadth of talent each of the designers displayed,” Rush says of this year’s shortlist. “Coming out of London Fashion Week, London has reaffirmed itself as the city for creativity and innovation and each of these brands so perfectly exemplifies that talent and fighting spirit that the UK is known for.”

Narmina Marandi and Tania Fares, co-chairs of The BFC Foundation, echo her sentiment: “The continued growth of the BFC Foundation and the support of initiatives like BFC/VDFF comes at a very critical time for our designers, who face one of their toughest years to date in propelling their businesses forward,” they say. “Seeing such an exciting and vibrant shortlist is proof that our British designers are still at the centre of global creativity. We need to continue to harness and support this talent for years to come.”

Mugler Is H&M’s Latest Designer Collaboration

Sharpen your elbows – today, H&M announces its upcoming collaboration with Mugler, launching online and in selected stores spring 2023.

H&M’s creative advisor, Ann-Sofie Johansson, joined forces with Casey Cadwallader, creative director of Mugler, on a capsule collection that showcases the best of both brands, marking a special moment that brings luxury looks to the high street.

Of course, the retailer has a history of teaming up with some of the biggest designer brands in the fashion industry, having previously worked with Karl Lagerfeld (2004), Comme des Garçons (2008) and Versace (2011) on sellout partnerships over the years.

In the past, shoppers have queued for hours to get their hands on H&M’s exclusive collabs, so expect to see fans of the house’s body-positive (and body-conscious) pieces staking their claim on the pavement early ahead of the release of Mugler X H&M.

Cadwallader was appointed creative director of Mugler in 2017, and he has subsequently forged his own vision for the house, recruiting muses that represent his ethos (Dominique Jackson and Paloma Elsesser were among the models that walked his autumn/winter 2022 runway).

On the launch of his debut Mugler collection in 2018, he told Vogue that he wanted to “start a conversation around what powerful modern femininity means”, which he has since achieved via empowering silhouettes and spectacular casting. His collaboration with H&M will provide yet another opportunity for him to platform his core values.

The Central Saint Martins MA Graduate Show

Central Saint Martins has cultivated a roster of stellar fashion talents over the years – and the crop of 2023 is certainly promising. The college hosted a runway show on schedule during London Fashion Week, featuring the work of graduates from its prestigious MA course. Read on for the new names to know now.

It cemented London’s status as talent-maker

It was entirely appropriate that the Central Saint Martins MA graduate show would take place immediately before Daniel Lee’s debut for Burberry. A product of the fabled fashion school, Lee is a Bradford-born Brit who went to Paris, made it big, and returned to London to take over the biggest fashion house in Britain. The raw, experimental expressions that filled the CSM runway were testament to the talent this country continues to nurture. It was exemplified in Yaku Stapleton, who won the prestigious L’Oréal Professionnel award judged by Off-White’s image director Ibrahim Kamara.

Yaku won the L’Oreal Professionnel prize

Known simply as Yaku, the show’s winner presented an inspired collection that envisioned members of his family as characters in his favourite game, RuneScape. They came out wielding swords and giant hammers like something out of a fantasy film, but there was nothing silly about the theatre that played out on Yaku’s runway. Every fantastical garment was beautifully, intricately constructed to the point that you visualise how the designer could exercise his craft in a commercial fashion landscape. Inspired with ideas of Afrofuturism, a philosophy with which Virgil Abloh imbued all his work, you couldn’t help but think how the late designer would have loved it.

Maxime Black made a collection from AI

It’s easy to feel old when you go to a CSM show. Backstage, Maxime Black explained how all his creations had been generated by artificial intelligence. Quite literally, he fed a machine – and excuse the lack of proper terminology here – some 3,000 ideas of what a generic fashion collection looks like, and transformed the results it came back with into real clothes. It made for a trippy and kind of deformed aesthetic where pockets appeared in strange places and spikes protruded from clothes like something out of Michael and Janet Jackson’s “Scream” video (if there’s a reference to reveal a writer’s age). It was a clever and entirely generational approach to design that will see Maxime – real surname Touzé – go far.

Chié Kaya won the Canada Goose prize

Chié Kaya, who won the Canada Goose prize for sustainability alongside Alessandro Tondolo, proposed an idea founded in heirlooms. Created from repurposed menswear, the collection transformed one type of garment into another through draping and adapted others into accessories. “It captures how working women purchase signature clothing items from men’s and women’s existing wardrobes and wear them by alternating, deconstructing and juxtaposing their structures as a proposition to daily and occasional wear,” read her mission statement.

Xuesong Yang took inspiration from Mongolian wrestling

Xuesong Yang put on a spirited presentation informed by his Mongolian homeland. Styled on a strong character cast, he evoked the Mongolian wrestling discipline Bökh “as an interplay between masculinity and the environment”, fusing in his garments the impression of the country’s natural scenery and the attitude of the sport. It made for a pretty hypnotising display that made you want to see more.

Daniel Lee’s A/W´23 Debut Show For Burberry

Daniel Lee had a tent erected in South London to unveil his debut collection for Burberry, an industrial take on English romanticism that subverted the house’s signature checks (and saw Lennon Gallagher and Iris Law walk the runway). Anders Christian Madsen was there.

The show was Daniel Lee’s first for Burberry

“I think the brand is about functionality,” Daniel Lee reflected after a debut show for Burberry that dialled down the glamour of previous interpretations in favour of a more everyday sensibility. That sounds a lot more normal than it looked. Lee – who worked for Phoebe Philo at Céline and spent 2018 to 2021 transforming Bottega Veneta into one of the coolest brands – exercised his talent for subversion in purple, blue, yellow and red adaptations of the house’s signature checks, clashed and emblazoned head-to-toe in outfits that weren’t for the faint of heart. The colours characterised a highly graphic collection that succeeded in translating the functionality Lee detected in Burberry into workwear, tailoring and day dresses that felt both challenging and desirable – just what people want from him.

It took place in a spooky tent south of the river

Lee’s debut for Burberry marked the brand’s return to English hands after five years under Italian Riccardo Tisci, who took over from Christopher Bailey (of Halifax) who sat front row. As a signal, perhaps, of the different understanding of Britishness his background brings to Burberry, Lee chose the unassuming South London location of Kennington Park to present his show. Here, he raised a tent inspired by those the house created in the 1920s and ’30s, and filled it with what looked like mounds of checked blankets (which some guests, tipsy on the hot toddies served pre-show, obviously nicked after) and checked hot water bottles. Add the spooky lights and horror sound effects that played during seating, and you’d understand that the Britishness Lee was bringing to the table was anything but the postcard kind.

It was an industrial take on English romanticism

If there was a British romanticism to Lee’s collection the way we’ve often known it from Burberry, it was the industrial kind, if that’s not a total oxymoron. The show opened with two green trench coats that looked as if they’d been soaked in petroleum, trimmed with very faux-looking faux fur collars and big rigid morphs between military riding boots and wellies. Later, various adaptations of the trench coat followed in anoraks and shirt-and-trouser combos. It felt like an expression of a side to England that didn’t just feel real but also relevant in a socio-political and financial climate that’s seen better days. “All the trench coats you saw in the show were made in Castleford. It’s been really nice to engage the team there,” Lee said, echoing the point.

Lee wanted positive vibes

For all its industrial undertones, it was by no means a sombre take on Burberry. On the contrary, Lee consistently balanced things with quirky elements: duck prints (“they make me think of the park”), humorous hats and blanket coats. “I want it to be positive and I want to, hopefully, show some positivity about Britain to the world. There are great schools here, there’s great theatre, there’s great music, there’s great art. I want to shine a light on those things,” he reflected. “So much creativity comes out of London. I mean look at Vivienne,” he said, referring to Westwood, whose memorial took place last week. “You walk down the street and you’re surrounded by people from so many walks of life, all living together. That’s something I missed in recent years and that’s what I’m trying to celebrate.”

It brought a new dawn of accessories for Burberry

You could attribute much of Lee’s success at Bottega Veneta to the accessories he created there: magnified, with the jump-through-the-screen animation a digital age of dressers go mad for. Yet to be broken, there was no need to fix that approach for Burberry. Lee presented a string of supersized bags and shoes sure to put Burberry on a die-hard accessories map that hasn’t been characteristic of the house in the past. “It’s exciting to try and find what is the narrative for Burberry bags, because it’s not a brand that’s really been known for that before. It’s about functionality. Daytime. They’re not too precious,” he said. They served as the icing on the cake in a collection summed up by the words Lee put on a T-shirt: “Winds of change.” Smiling, he said: “I thought it was funny. Change for me, change for the brand, change for the positive thing.”

Christopher Kane’s “Humble Flora And Fauna” A/W´23 Collection

At the heart of Christopher Kane’s collection was a focus on the elements of the world that normally get ignored and attributed less value, writes Anders Christian Madsen. Here, five things you need to know about his autumn/winter 2023 show.

It was an extreme exercise in elevation

Enveloped in shiny material in different colours, the seats that lined Christopher Kane’s runway in a gallery-like space in White Lion Street looked like an art installation. On closer inspection, they were humble hay bales wrapped in simple plastic. The dichotomy was a foreshadowing of a collection that consistently transformed simplicity and normality into avant-garde. In typical Kane style, the collection was an exercise in how to make the trivial sophisticated, intellectual – even arcane. In a Great Britain that’s seen better, smarter and certainly richer days, that message counted for a lot.

It was inspired by Kane’s childhood

The collection was inspired by Kane’s memories of the outfits his mother, aunts and neighbours wore in the 1980s: the uniforms of waitresses, housewives, and cleaners. The ideas spoke for themselves: chopping board collars erected on the shoulders of dresses, bustles on skirts made to look like tied bin bags, and colours informed by those of school uniforms. It was reality made unreal: a fantastical take on the make-do and mend mentality that sets in when times are tough. But it was Kane’s celebration of those very same things – an elevation of the unrecognised.

It featured AI-generated prints

Like the bustles that decorated the fronts and backs of skirts, nothing was like it seemed: “They were meant to be intestines at the front, unravelling, and then it became an intestine bustle,” Kane said backstage. “Then it was almost like waddle, like duck waddle, waddling along like a black swan, an ugly duckling.” He projected his elevating spotlight onto the humble parts of flora and fauna that aren’t traditionally seen as ‘fine’. The AI-generated prints of swarms of rats, chickens and piglets emblazoned column dresses were both cute and creepy, confronting you with all your prejudice and phobias.

Floral prints were humble

At the heart of Kane’s collection was a focus on the elements of the world that normally get ignored and attributed less value. It was true for the animal prints, which he referred to as “working-class animals” and for the floral motifs he said were made up of unassuming flowers – not wild ones, but the urban ones that grow between tiles that you rarely even notice. “I never go for the beautiful flowers. I always go for the working-class flowers. Really humble. They’re always just trodden on.”

It went against the grain

You could make what you wanted of Kane’s proposals, but his elevation of the normal and the ignored felt pretty loaded in the current financial climate. “Life is beautiful for some more than others,” a voice on the soundtrack repeated (to the beat of a purring cat) and backstage, he referenced his childhood growing up in working-class Scotland. For all his achievements and avant-garde status, Kane has feet firmly planted in the soil that nurtured him. In a time when fashion’s obsession with glamour cuts a striking contrast to the real world, his show was something of a wake-up call.

Erdem’s Victorian-Inspired A/W´23 show

Erdem’s autumn/winter 2023 collection was inspired by ideas of Victorian madness, and the history of the designer’s Bloomsbury home. Below, see Vogue fashion critic Anders Christian Madsen’s key takeaways from the show.

Erdem’s narrative was close to home

As Erdem Moralıoğlu’s guests took their seats in the blackened-out Sadler’s Wells theatre, a voice could be heard reading aloud from The Yellow Wallpaper from 1892. “It’s a story of a woman who slowly goes mad because there’s arsenic in her wallpaper,” he said backstage, not entirely unexcitedly. “I love that idea.” You could imagine how the mind of Moralıoğlu – a true storyteller who’s addicted to history – had started spinning when he peeled off the wallpaper in the Georgian house he bought in Bloomsbury two years ago to find walls covered in toxic colours like “absinthe and apple green and lilac”. The mad Victorian ghosts that haunted his runway this season were the imagination sparked by those discoveries, and the history he uncovered in the house.

It was based on Victorian Houses of Hope

In the 1860s, the house Moralıoğlu shares with his interior architect husband Philip Joseph served as a so-called House of Hope for “fallen and friendless women”. Upon discovering its history, he immersed himself in research that soon formed a narrative for his collection. “Maybe, what brought them to that house was most likely the death of someone – a father or a husband,” he thought to himself, and decided to open the show with a look that picked up where his black-veiled funeral march for Queen Elizabeth II left off last season: an all-black floral coat that exploded into a full black skirt at the back, the dialogue between which set the tone for Moralıoğlu’s Victorian collection.

Models wore lockets and broken keys

“Our house was where the children were born,” Moralıoğlu noted, referring to his research. It inspired lockets and broken keys evocative of the trinkets mothers would leave their children at the orphanage so they might recognise them if they were fortunate enough to be reunited a decade on. It’s easy to view Moralıoğlu’s history-driven narratives as pure theatre – and he wouldn’t mind that either – but this designer is no escapist. As with all his tales, this season’s horror story and its representations of the misery of Victorian England felt like a pointed parallel to the present-day state of the union: the cost of living crisis and the unbelievable accounts of poverty that have become daily news in 2023.

It was also a horror story

Through his research, Moralıoğlu unearthed a story from the 1860s. “Two of the women who were staying there had missed a curfew at one point and weren’t allowed in the house. They were intoxicated and they had incited a riot in the square.” As an image of the black-clad Victorian women left out in the rain, he suspended light-bulbs from the theatre’s ceiling like huge droplets, soaked his models’ hair, and embroidered garments with glistening black beads that resembled raindrops. His horror was electrified by the toxic greens, yellows, pinks and lilacs that intensified the danger of psychotically twisted dresses and gowns so bulbous they evoked ideas of disfigurement, something Moralıoğlu likened to “a hallucinogenic reverie of Victorian preoccupation with madness and absinthe and undone-ness.”

Erdem paid tribute to Dame Vivienne Westwood

If there was an added Englishness to the Erdem experience this season, a certain legend may have been on his mind. Three days before the show, he attended the memorial of Dame Vivienne Westwood, whom he interned with as part of his training. “I remember, in 2000, sitting cross-legged and she’d let work placements attend fittings and watch her and Andreas [Kronthaler] drape on the stand and look at the archive, which was extraordinary,” he reminisced. “It was the only work placement I ever did and I really loved her. When I was there, that’s when I decided that this was what I wanted to do. It was an important time for me.”

Molly Goddard’s Intimate A/W´23 Show

For autumn/winter 2023, Molly Goddard presented a pared-back collection in her east London atelier that put the focus squarely on her core signatures. Below, five things you need to know about the show.

The show was held in her east London atelier

After staging her last show in the sporty environs of Seymour Leisure Centre, this season Goddard opted for the more intimate setting of her east London atelier. “We’re based in an incredible building that used to be an old umbrella factory and Wolfgang Tillmans’s studio, but we’ve slowly taken over in the last few years,” she says. “It’s the perfect location to present this collection – I wanted to rein it in, and to keep everything at its most honest.”

It was all about simplicity

The clothes were a celebration of Goddard’s signatures, but in a stripped-back way – from Aran and Fair Isle knit separates in navy and grey, to low-slung cotton dresses in mauve. “The silhouettes are more pared-back than usual,” explains the designer. “I wanted the focus to be on the fabrics and the details we’ve worked on, without any unnecessary drama or optics – just the pure joy of clothes.”

There was tulle, but not as you know it

Goddard, who is renowned for her use of voluminous tulle, chose to continue utilising it but in a restrained manner. The designer toned down her use of her favourite fabric by realising it in demure, A-line silhouettes. Models wore leopard-print tulle skirts and strapless dresses, or maxi skirts in white, yellow and crimson.

Platforms stomped down the runway

Goddard has form for creating a viral footwear moment (the Ugg collaboration from spring/summer 2021 springs to mind), and this season presented a contemporary platform shoe that had the fashion crowd swooning. The pumped-up Mary-Janes appeared in black, white and a perfect pale yellow shade.

The brand’s closest collaborators were on the front row

The designer decided to invite a small number of guests rather than the usual swarm of celebrities and influencers that descend on London shows. This time, the front row was made up of influential fashion industry figures, stylists, and close friends and collaborators of the brand.

Vivienne Westwood Is Remembered In London

How can you encapsulate the life and legacy of Vivienne Westwood – a chief genius in England’s fashion canon and much, much more besides – in a memorial service? As her granddaughter, Cora Corré, conceded in the last address of Thursday afternoon’s event at Southwark Cathedral: “We can only really touch on the characteristics of the phenomenon that is Vivienne Westwood: a grandmother, a mother, a sister, a friend, a teacher, an artist, a designer – it will never be enough.”

From family to fashion via punk and protest, there was a lot of ground to cover in this 90-minute celebration of Westwood, who passed away in December. And yet there were also well-judged moments that served as reflective punctuation marks – allowing it all to sink in – provided via some particularly beautiful performances. One was from Nick Cave, who sat marvellously saturnine at the piano to sing “Into My Arms” with painfully emotional precision. Another was from Chrissie Hynde, who, accompanied by a guitarist, delivered Buddy Holly’s “Raining in My Heart” low and pure.

The attendees who came to remember Westwood reflected her rich and various progress through life. They included, in no specific order, Paul Smith, Kate Moss, Tracey Emin, Elle Fanning, Victoria Beckham, Pam Hogg, Lily Cole, Liberty Ross, Bianca Jagger, Georgia Jagger, Bob Geldof, Sadie Frost, Jade Parfitt, Mark Moore, Giles Deacon, Beth Ditto, Zandra Rhodes, Brian Cox, Richard E. Grant, Ellen von Unwerth, Paloma Faith, Erdem Moralioglu, Matty Bovan, Stormzy, Alexa Chung, Vanessa Redgrave, and Christina Hendricks. Hamish Bowles, Edward Enninful, and Anna Wintour were amongst those from this parish.

The service began and ended with performances by Arnfield Brass, a brass band local to Westwood’s birthplace near Tintwistle, Derbyshire, that had played at her funeral there in January. The welcome was provided by Reverend Andrew Nunn, the dean of Southwark.

Then came Andreas Kronthaler, Westwood’s husband. Movingly, he told two stories about his wife, one from either side of their time together. The first was from 1988, when he was a student of fashion in Vienna and she was his teacher and they began their relationship. He recalled taking her on an illicit early date to see the city’s best Old Master paintings. When he picked Westwood up, he recalled: “She looked a sensation. She wore a chocolate brown stretch-velvet catsuit. A scarf draped around her hip. Her rocking-horse shoes. A leopard fake fur in pink. And her curls, in orange.” At the Kunsthistorisches he showed her his favorite Velázquez and then a Rubens – an image of which was on the tie he was wearing as he spoke to us from the pulpit. As Westwood was looking at the painting, recalled Kronthaler: “I looked at her and realised that she was my darling girl and I would be with her forever.”

The second story was of how, in her later years, Westwood had read and reread a favourite book of Chinese poetry as part of her immersion into Taoism. The book had eventually fallen apart, and Kronthaler promised to stick it back into shape – before discovering that some of the pages were missing, despite all his searching. He only found them after her passing. Kronthaler closed by saying: “Vivienne brought us all together here today, and what she wanted more than anything was for each of us to do all we can to make the world a better place.”

Westwood’s younger son, Joseph Corré, came next and revealed some fascinating details about the formation of his mother’s iconoclastic spirit. He said that although Westwood was “not a religious person”, her shock at learning while a child in Derbyshire the story of Jesus Christ had aroused in her a burning passion to battle injustice. He added: “Back in the 1970s, affected by the horrors of the war in Vietnam, she became interested in the idea of chaos: a shout into the void, as a way of creating something that wasn’t there. That led her to develop ideas about anarchy, which she graphically demonstrated by putting the A into the circle.” After lamenting the enforced absence of Julian Assange, he added: “We should remember and never forget that she made the most beautiful clothes that made so many people feel amazingly fabulous… clothes that had a magical quality.” Part of that quality, he said, was that Westwood’s activist convictions were inherently ingrained in the garments. He closed by saying that his mother had left him with a to-do list: “Some things are quite challenging, like ‘stop the war’, ‘stop climate change’, and ‘protect human rights’.”

Then followed a film created by Westwood’s brother, Gordon Swire, that mixed footage from the Derbyshire and Yorkshire dales and moors of her childhood with footage of the designer speaking. Of her early life we heard Westwood remember searching for berries with her father and loving to skip on the street with her friends – “it felt like flying” – before becoming a confirmed habitué of local dances. She claimed to have kissed 200 boys – they would canoodle in air-raid shelters – and specially printed when 14 a bulk order of photographs of herself in order to be able to give each night’s beau a keepsake.

Later she said: “Fashion: I really love doing it. It’s really a kind of lifeline to me. It’s recharging my batteries. It’s exciting. I love what we’re doing, and I think the next thing we are doing is the best thing I have ever done. Because it’s totally political.” She then remembered back to when, as an already seasoned clothes maker, she started applying that skill to the punk milieu. She said: “I used to make all my own clothes. So when my husband, Malcolm McLaren, wanted to make something, I could make whatever he wanted. And whatever I wanted. He tried working with other people, but none were any good.”

What followed was possibly the high point of the service, an impassioned declaration of love to Westwood’s clothing by lifelong customer Helena Bonham Carter, who admitted to owning no fewer than seven cocotte dresses. “I have an obscene amount, a sinful amount of her clothes. Decades’ worth. She would like it, given she was always telling us to buy less.” She recalled buying her first pirate shirt, aged 15, from Westwood’s shop in World’s End “so I could be Adam Ant”. She explained how she once reprimanded a red-carpet journalist who asked why she always wore Westwood, because it was always “the same, same, same”. Bonham Carter replied: “No, no, no. You have no idea how many ideas and choices have gone into this dress. She is never boring. And the dresses do all the work. All the actresses on this red carpet haven’t eaten for weeks – and I have had a full-fat English breakfast.” Of wearing Westwood she said: “I feel like who I want to be. I feel like a woman… She has given me my armour to face the world for so many years.” She added: “Thank you for the cutting, the draping that makes your clothes so dynamic and alive, so much so that I wouldn’t be surprised to wake in the night and find them dancing in my closet, alive.”

Next came Cave and then a reading of Shakespeare by Ben, her older son, and then a reflection on Westwood’s tireless activism by the environmentalist John Sauven. Chrissie Hynde sang her gorgeous cover to preface Cora Corré’s closing address. Outside in the churchyard I bumped into Erdem Moralioglu, who was rushing back to prepare for his show. He stopped to share that once, many years ago, he had spent time interning for Westwood. “She let us watch the fittings, which was wonderful. She was wonderful.” As she was.