Firmly in the Fast lane
Do fashion shows ever throw up real surprises? John Galliano’s Spring 2006 show was an exception – he sent dwarves, twins, old people, down the runway as an attempt to. . . well, to do what? If he was attempting to confound the boundaries of fashion, surely he would have continued with his next Galliano show. Instead, he reverted to form – and to models – for his next show.
This season at London Fashion Week, Mark Fast, a London knitwear designer, really went the whole hog, if you’ll pardon the pun, by sending a variety of models down his runway, to showcase what he can do with knitwear, for all sizes. Fast’s show was a beautiful display of knitting skill in muted colours. Dresses with scalloped detailing, net overlays worthy of Susie Bubble, models who don’t quite fit the model mould, or at least not the catwalk one.
The only problem – and this is a minor quibble – was that the plus size models didn’t look quite as comfortable as the others, perhaps due to having spent the last few years out of the limelight, confined to the realms of plus-size catalogues, Marina Rinaldi and the occasional Glamour shoot.
But the pluses? They were manifold. The fact that Fast is a Topshop collaborator (I’m only just recovering from my journey to the dark side courtesy of Christopher Kane), the muted jewel colours, the Christian Louboutin shoe-boots. . . I know there will be a lot of talk about the plus-size debate (especially as it’s rumoured that Kane’s show stylist quit due to his outrage over the inclusion of said models), but it was also truly refreshing to see models on the runway who looked, well, like I do – and who wore skintight knits as if that was okay, instead of having been told by the latest issue of Marie-Claire that plus sized girls should cover their arms, stomachs and, well, basically everything. Hear, hear.
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