Fashion week comes to Frieze

Call it Frieze Fashion Week: When Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral landed smack in the middle of the official London Fashion Week in September, several designers decided, rather than jostling for crammed spots on preceding days, to reschedule for this week, conveniently accompanying the London opening of the annual art fair.

With more than 60,000 visitors anticipated, and many millions of pounds to exchange hands, there’s a natural tie-in between Frieze and fashion — if you’ve a lot of money to spend on painting, you probably spend plenty on clothes too. MatchesFashion.com, the London-based luxury retailer, has had presences at Frieze fairs since 2018, including in-fair pop-up shops. “It’s definitely commercial for us,” says Jess Christie, chief brand and content officer of MatchesFashion.com. “Our main aim is customer acquisition.”

Alexander McQueen had planned to show the day before Frieze’s official opening for months, well before the Queen’s passing. It is a brand that, in the common consciousness, has done more than many to blur the line between art and fashion — the founder Lee Alexander McQueen consciously referenced the work of artists such as Rebecca Horn and Joel-Peter Witkin in his shows, which aren’t conventional fashion fodder.

The label’s creative director Sarah Burton is more pragmatic with her designs, less theatrical for sure — there were no allusions to Witkin’s cadavers on her spring/summer 2023 catwalk, rather intricate embroideries inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights”, and gigantic eye prints peering out at the audience from strict suiting. That tailoring was the strong point of this show, including a revival of McQueen’s coccyx-baring “Bumster” trousers that seem aligned with the proclivities of Gen Z for ’90s-tinged hip-hugger waistlines.

Generally the lines seemed slicker and less romantic than Burton’s earlier offerings — gone, by and large, were ball gowns, replaced by moulded leather bodices and asymmetric skirts in a hard modernist palette of black, Hazmat orange or Yves Klein blue. “Our clothes are designed to empower,” said Burton, who used the word “dissected” to describe those cuts, which were laser precise. Yet, backstage, Burton had a pincushion strapped to her wrist — a reminder that McQueen’s clothes are the product of humanity rather than machine. Even when they seem cut with a scalpel, they’re not clinical.

Roksanda Ilinčić’s show didn’t just have art, but heart. She dedicated it to her father, who passed away this year, and showed in Theaster Gates’ monumental Black Chapel, which Ilinčić noted was built in response to the death of the artist’s own father. Ilinčić’s show was originally slated to take place on the day of Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral, but its shift to Frieze week allowed her to pepper her audience with arty types who often gravitate towards her clothes — the Tate’s director Maria Balshaw and the Serpentine’s Hans Ulrich Obrist were in attendance alongside artists and writers.

Gates’ space permitted reflection, but it also allowed Ilinčić’s talent with colour — this time inspired by the artist Pipilotti Rist — to sing out. This was a collection that was bolder, braver than her past few offerings. Its most successful excursions weren’t the wacky tailoring — a lopsided suit jacket colour-blocked in four different hues seems a tough sell — but a number of riotous, joyous and voluminous evening dresses inspired by roses. “The symbolism of roses — you take them to somebody when a baby is born, or at a wedding — and there’s the rose you put on a grave,” she said.

It was a simple idea — and the shapes of these dresses had a naive charm — but they packed a big impact, exploding from the body of the models, sometimes subsuming them in layers of fabric. Occasionally, they became more sculpture than dress — even so, this was the audience to show them to. Best was a look that collided fantasy and reality — that volume, in a verdant celery green taffeta, worn atop wide white trousers. A bit like a leek come to life, but far more chic.

The day before his spring/summer 2023 show, Raf Simons was scouring the kiosks of the art fair. He’s a collector, and a curator — the latter often expressed through his clothes, which have showcased collaborations with Sterling Ruby and the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

This season, he worked with the lesser-known Philippe Vandenberg. It occasionally seemed as if Vandenberg’s paper works had been wrapped around the bodies of Simons’ models, sometimes hanging free as it ripped straight from the wall.

There was a rawness to this collection, and show, staged in the London dance venue Printworks, a former newspaper printing facility in Southwark due to be closed next year for renovation. Simons threw a rave, interrupted halfway through when the open bar was cleared and models pounded along its length for an all-standing audience.

Eschewing the hierarchical seating of conventional fashion shows, it was a Darwinian fight to the front of the throng to see his clothes, meaning you were as likely to be cheek and jowl with youthful Simons enthusiasts as well figures such as Valentino creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli, the stylist Olivier Rizzo or the photographers Willy Vanderperre and David Sims, all of whom were in attendance.

“I didn’t want to do a blitz kids show,” Simons told me, a few days before. “What is London for me is tradition and classicism.” Hence the presence of ferociously refined tailoring alongside pieces that celebrated the body, inspired by dance both modern and classical.

The notion of dance was expressed through leotards in various fabrications — poplin shirting, fishnet and mohair, as well as more conventional fine-gauge wool knit — and a leggy body-consciousness that marked a strong detour from Simons’ influential oversized shapes.

“What should I reject from what I always do, to come to something new,” was a question he posed to himself — but there was no angst, rather an excitement about new proportions that seemed fresh, exciting.

Vintage gloves were appliquéd to elbows and the back of jackets — they flashed a V-sign, either for victory or peace. Simons achieved both. When he came out for his bow, halfway down his bar-runway, he simply jumped off, into the awaiting crowd, like a rock star. Less arty, more party.

Find out about our latest stories first — follow @financialtimesfashion on Instagram