He started the show with Camel, Navy and Light Khaki and that light khaki reminds me a washed old Chinese army uniform, which I used to wear in school during summer training camp. The colours are very conservative. The shapes, not! They’ve been very womanly cut and with a dash of leopard print thrown over, it looks like, if Communist Party could let loose a little bit, that would be how people dressed during Culture Revolution.

Slowly, he introduced more colours and prints. The Navi Blue…rich purple…washed olive…dash of pink….. All colours are mixed in with a bit of other colours: Blue with tiny strokes of orange and green; Purple with some smudged deep navy. He even mixes colours in that contradicted point of view, which is visually challenging our usual colour mix logic again and again.

While watching his show, I felt so inspired and literally wrote down 8 outfit ideas drawn from my own wardrobe…yeah…I can’t afford to buy all the original looks just yet… …so watch this place…ehhrrr…with my own mix-n-match in Van Noten style.

Burberry created some hot-waiting moment on line this season. We were waiting on line with passion to see the live stream and all those shearling details is definitely a genius idea. Christopher Bailey said in the interview that he would like to bring something different, another key piece for Burberry just like trench coat. And he certainly has done so by digging into the archive and  english heritage. Mixing hard and soft materials together like sheered chiffon dresses, thigh-high leather boots and the aviator jackets is so clever. Bailey has certainly done it again! I am eager to see who he will name as the new face of AW10 campaign as personally opinion here, Emma Watson is not so suitable for all these looks.

Another Christopher, the scots, Mr. Kane has also massively used leather throughout his show. Leather seems to be his favourite choice for a Fall collection. This time, he mixes lace and embroidery with leather. Even the little oriental ‘QiPao’ look is done so carefully without looking too ethnic like a Chinese traditional dress.

Julien Macdonald brought back his root and did what he’s best known of—-complicated chunky knits and fine lace paneled floaty dress. His collection looks so strong and commercial and is one of our most favourite in our design office.

Another favourite is Jonathan Saunders. I absolutely love the colour palettes with black, white and duck egg. X-ray rose print looks very broad but chic. Also love love the parkas mixed with shiny and mat-surface fabric.

On the other side, certain designers should do more homework than just having publicity stuns such as using plus size model, which feels like ‘do you have any more than just that’?!  Fashion is a beauty to watch but not horror like Mark Fast. Surely Fast created lots of rows and gossips during London FW, but putting size 12 models into a size 6 dress and not even giving them decent size knickers is just so unprofessional. I have no problem of using plus size model by recalling a seriously beautiful Sophie Dahl sent down by Jean Paul Gaultier in the past. Certain Fast models were looking so grim while walking down the catwalk. I’m sure they knew themselves looking like an Italian salami.

Big names’ support to London FW is appreciated. While maintaining their reputation within industry, designers like Saunders are also taking off their careers to a more global stage. Yes, London got that punk history and casual streety feel. But with hard effort and less short-cut stuns, I’m sure that London will soon be looking more interesting and professional again, otherwise, it’ll just become an unpleasant Fast food chain.

Photo source: Elle (NO)

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Photo source: Velvet Magazine, via Life is a puzzle

One of the things I like the most is how they’ve blended different types of textures – wools, denim, silks, leather and fur. The colour palette is black and white with muted greys and browns. The most striking thing about the range though is the complex construction of the garments and the sharp silhouettes.  The result is a range of clothes that are extremely flattering to the figure.

Photo source: Jessica Miller for style.com (via CouteQueCoute)

It was Proenza Schouler made scuba-diving cool in the fashion market and mixing a bit of futurism into those tropical colours during their SS10 collection. Again, their AW10 is making leather so much more wearable and approachable, make this way…nothing meat-market type. They also mix cool geo print with sweet flavour florals in fit n’ flare shapes, which is now their signature shape and also up-coming No.1 shape in dresses.

Alexander Wang took his scissors to wall street bankers’ suits. No one could fill the catwalk with so much pin stripes and still so stylish. Velvet and mesh mixed dresses are so divine and I”m sure his tailored city shorts will be seen on women as a cool day-wear stable too. His energy and the full understanding of women’s modern taste also reflexed by the action of broadcasting live on New York Time Square.

Not only his clothes are widely copied among high street, but also the hair style and detail styling too. I can already see lots of girls playing the messy fish tail plaits from his SS10 catwalk show. I can’t wait to see if there’s any greasy sweep-to-one-side look showing around in the fashion world in AW10.

Atmosphere was great throughout the show room. DJ is flicking all newest cool tunes, loud but still in a gentle level for conversations.

First thing we’ve noticed are the balloons and all types of sweeties in every single corner. Then we were quickly drawn to Stolen Girlfriends Club presented on the first 2 rails. Loop back jersey sweater and scuba-diving-inspired jeggings are key items. Mesh was widely used too. However the whole range feels like a bit a of taking-AlexWang’s-leftovers. But overall, it’s a very young trendy range and I have no doubt of its commercial selling point.

The following grab-my-eyes collection is Tina Kalivas. Amazing print and high-tech tribal vibe are injected into range. She also got a very cool website which I have checked later on. Highly interacted with visual playful patterns, worth checking out.

As our blog’s name c5c5c5 (a type of a grey in web colour digit world) tells our favouite colour is grey, I was naturally drawn to ‘Alpha 60′. Its collection is well thought-out and deconstructed. Carefully selected grey tones are singing mildly together.

printed fine silk cotton dress

There’re many more labels showing around such as Sosume – a collection of super fine jersey basis, Lucy Hutchings’ amazing jewelry collection. But overall Alpha 60 would be my ideal slouchy day wear and Tina Kalivas as my perfect cocktail night pieces. PS, also love Toby Jones’ chain glove!!

And finally Big thank you to lovely Andrea who is the PR of Robinson Pfeffer show room.

Denim industry has been experiencing a difficult time due to the rise of popularity of  leggings and jeggings. However, denim is going to come back!! But not in form of jeans. Last season we’ve seen lots of ‘Double Denim’ and denim shirts come out. For this show, there’re plenty of new technique infused into the clothes.

Mixing leather with denim and bleached denim…having embroidery on nude mesh…the red brick colour of acid wash…all of which helps Diesel Black Gold looking so refreshing and less usual ‘try-hard’ look.

Well done, Sophia, I salute you!!!

To start with, Canadian designer Jeremy Laing caught my eyes last season by reading SusieBubble’s. And this season he’s certainly no failing. Earthy colours mixed within vast of textures from fur to chunky knits to fine jersey.

Preen is continuously being strong, artisic and commercial. Review at Style.com stated that ‘a good show can be sensed from people without discussions to each other’. Pale nude, creme and black are being mixed into all kinds of shapes and forms which is just wonderful.

I also very much enjoy the mini-collection of Lutz & Patmos. Layers of fine knits teamed with silver metallic cigarette pants are looking american-ish ‘tres chic’.

Most commercial collection would be Rag & Bones. To be honest, no ground-braking.  Stylist’s job is definitely more praised there. But I can tell, at the end it’ll be followed by high-street religiously. 

We spoke on the phone just moments after the Daily Mail broke the sad news of Lee Alexander McQueen’s passing. The news came as a huge shock to the both of us. We’re both huge fans of his work and it was hard to describe what we were feeling. He was such an inspiration and it’s hard to believe that he is now gone.

For the past couple of days we’ve been reminiscing by digging through old scrapbooks, old magazines and looking at pictures from his past collections. In this blog post (which also happens to be the first one we’ve ever co-written) we would like to pay tribute to Lee by sharing some of our favourite Alexander McQueen moments.

One of our earliest memories of McQueen dates back to this iconic image of a young Devon Aoki photographed by Nick Knight for Visionaire in 1997.

Whether he was sending models down the catwalk with wolves on a liege or creating indoor snow storms, McQueen’s shows were always spectacular. In an interview with CNN, Lee stated that “the show comes first for me.” Who can forget the spring/summer 1999 show with Shalom Harlow wearing a white dress, being spray-painted by two robotic jets.

The concept was kind of Edwardian girls lost somewhere. It came about through Harry Potter, when he was doing a chess game in the film, and I thought we’d reinvent the chess game and distinguish the chess sets by changing the nationality of each row. The Japanese and the Americans faced each other. We had to get the girls off the runway, so what did we do? Have a chess match, with a robotic voice dictating the moves.

For his autumn/winter 2009/2010 menswear collection, he lined the catwalk with Victorian-style lamp posts. The whole mood and theme was dark and gothic and brought a certain Tim Burton movie staring Johnny Depp to mind.

Nowadays catwalk designs are widely copied by high-street retailers and sold before the original pieces are available in the shops, but his last spring/summer show (mentioned further up in this post) gathered so much technology and energy, that it seemed as if the show itself was telling the world, “all you just need to wait till I come out.” Plato’s Atlantis (McQueen’s spring/summer 2010 collection) seems invincible and will be a hard act to copy. It’s almost as if the show itself is again murmuring “yes, you lot can appreciate me, watch me and own me, but you can not copy me.”

And yes, this is the true Alexander McQueen spirit. Never one to follow others, always the one to lead.

R.I.P. and long live McQueen.