Fashion week comes to Frize

Call it Frieze Fashion Week: When Queen Elizabeth IIs 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, theres a natural tie-in between Frieze and fashion if youve 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. Its 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 Friezes official opening for months, well before the Queens 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 arent conventional fashion fodder.

The labels creative director Sarah Burton is more pragmatic with her designs, less theatrical for sure there were no allusions to Witkins cadavers on her spring/summer 2023 catwalk, rather intricate embroideries inspired by Hieronymus Boschs 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 McQueens 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 Burtons earlier offerings gone, by and large, were ball gowns, replaced by molded 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 McQueens clothes are the product of humanity rather than machine. Even when they seem cut with a scalpel, theyre not clinical.

Roksanda Ilinis show didnt 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 Ilini noted was built in response to the death of the artists own father. Ilinis show was originally slated to take place on the day of Queen Elizabeth IIs funeral, but its shift to Frieze week allowed her to pepper her audience with arty types who often gravitate towards her clothes the Tates director Maria Balshaw and the Serpentines Hans Ulrich Obrist were in attendance alongside artists and writers.

Gates space permitted reflection, but it is also allowed Ilinis talent with color 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 werent 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 theres 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 stalls of the art fair. Hes 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 Vandenbergs 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 didnt 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 appliqud 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 waiting crowd, like a rock star. Less arty, more party.

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