The sisters are doing it for themselves

Some folks may think that London Fashion Week is having something of a lull, but the news has not got through to a group of four women’s designers who staged diverse and dynamic shows on Saturday.

 
Led by two Sineads—Gorey and O’Dwyer—French-born designer Pauline Dujancourt and an Irish tailor on Savile Row, the big news this weekend is that the sisters are doing it for themselves.
 

Pauline Dujancourt: Weaving past and present

Saturday’s most beautiful show was a moodily romantic statement by Pauline Dujancourt, a French lady who has made London her home.
 
Poetic and unexpected, Dujancourt’s speciality is combing and intertwining highly unlikely fabrics and fabrications into refined fashion statements.

Her key materials were the lightest of Aran sweaters, though made into unusual rectangles and featured in assemblages of ribbons, hundreds of chiffon shards, intricate floral crochets, hand-edged laces, satin silk, and feather tulle.
 
Pauline’s inspiration was a Flaming Sword Vriesea plant she gifted her grandmother back in the 1980s, which only occasionally blossomed to reveal its vivid red flowers. After her grandmother’s passing, Pauline’s uncle preserved the plant, giving each relative an offshoot.

Now, each February, the birth month of her grand-mère, the Vriesea blooms. “Except for my offshoot, so this collection is meant to express how my ideas and clothes bloom,” smiled the willowy Dujancourt as fans and mentor Henry Holland feted her backstage.
 
In some smart editing, stylist Edda Gudmunsdottir added a soupçon of rebel punk, the models marching in great new Dr Martens’ Buzz boots, their hair faintly dishevelled. Made in a sombre palette of ethereal greys, hazy blues, and beetroot red, Dujancourt created images of bedraggled beauty and a delicate fashion moment evoking memory, loss, and renewal.

Sinead Gorey: Revel n Roll

Titanic amounts of attitude were on display at the Sinead Gorey show, whose cast looked like they were marching into a nightclub at 2 a.m.—or out of one for a late-night snack, given that one of her sponsors was KFC, which left a £10 redeemable Chicken Check on each seat inside the main parking lot of Cavendish Square.

 
Given London’s abundance of impressive architecture, it is surprising how many shows take place inside this gloomy garage. However, in Gorey’s case, the setting worked, as models emerged from a shadowy corner into after-hours nightclub lighting.
 
Sinead’s big idea for this season was a “thrown together” grove, a mash-up of corsets, leggings printed in huge smoochy kisses, dressing downs, and micro minis, all anchored by some great Converse Chuck Taylor sneakers.
 
She is a spirited designer who is not afraid to pair sweatshirts and bustiers in the same grey cotton look with pink Converse boots featuring high heels. She then sent out striking windowpane-check pantsuits, cut like tight ski gear, and finished with dominatrix boots—but in pink and white rather than black—and impressed with Restoration-style damsel coat capes paired with bit-button hot pants.

 
Call it Revel & Roll, where many models smoked cigarettes or carried KFC boxes. 
 
In one of the most depressing weeks of realignment in global politics, with the special relationship on life support, it somehow felt reviving to witness this collection’s “hangover insouciance” and devil-may-care sass.
 

Sinéad O’Dwyer: Character Studies on The Strand 

Sinéad—spelt with an accent or fada on the “e”—O’Dwyer looks at women in a very different light than Sinead Gorey. Not many party animals were in sight at this show staged inside 180 The Strand, a disused ’70s office building that operates as the season’s nerve centre.
 
O’Dwyer’s ladies were often positively diligent, albeit with a sense of naughty independence. This was best expressed in their footwear—a fantastic series of thigh boots that morphed into ergonomic sneakers with bulbous bubble soles.

 
Her key material was a crushed organza that could have passed for parachute fabric, often ruched or doubled up and made in black or burgundy. O’Dwyer often employed these skirts and dresses short, then added more edge with multiple navel cutouts.

Adding in a medieval sensibility with tough-chic pleated mini-skirts or big Elizabethan bloomers paired with sculpted shirts and boots. 
 
Her cast was highly democratic, ranging from lean but never skinny to voluptuous and corpulent. One dark-haired beauty in a black organza shirt dress came by in an electric wheelchair. Sinéad named her collection Character Studies, and one could see why.

 
Leading to a finale that won O’Dwyer the biggest burst of fashionable applause of Saturday.

Banshee of Savile Row: Interwoven on Cork Street

An exhibition show marked the runway debut of Banshee of Savile Row, where artist Eleanor Ekserdjian staged a live painting performance while models walked around the David Messum gallery on Cork Street.
 
Founded by Ruby Slevin to merge feminine fashion with precise tailoring, Banshee is the only official womenswear tailor of Savile Row.

There were barely a dozen looks in the show, but all of them were strong—from a perfectly cut soft grey herringbone three-piece suit to another in tortilla-hued gingham, both nipped at the waist with one button and slanted pockets, to an ankle-length tweed coat in mauve and a striking Blue Raven opera coat finished with frogging.
 
Several silk shirts worn with sharp suits were composed of prints by Ekserdjian, which led to the show’s title: Interwoven.

Throughout, Ekserdjian painted her squiggly gestural lines onto a towering stationary model in an all-white double-breasted coat—the same style seen in two of her paper drawings inside the gallery.
 
Completing her task, the cast joined for a final walk before Ruby and Eleanor took a joint bow to enthusiastic applause.