London Fashion Week spring/summer 2013 round-up

If the fashion catwalk cameo at the closing ceremony of the Olympics underwhelmed, it was because it represented everything that British fashion no longer is. It isn't - give or take a few international fashion editors - pompous. It isn't, apart from a few, best-ignored, designers, bombastic. It doesn't take itself too seriously and the models, on the whole, are troopers trying to make a living, not spoilt divas who haven't yet twigged that out-of-control egos are very last-decade. If we have a USP, it is, as Mulberry's creative director Emma Hill said, following the Mulberry blockbuster yesterday at Claridge's "a sense of humour. You don't need to tamper with things too much. Our natural style is very cool."But without wit and playfulness, cool becomes painfully tedious. Whether it's the crazy-but-inspired clashing prints of designers such as Clements Ribeiro, Preen and Mary Katrantzou, or the boffinish invention of Erdem, Christopher Kane and Jonathan Saunders, with their gung-ho approach to synthetics, holograms, neon lace and patent, and mixing them all together, as this week proved, British fashion is now an Olympic-level sport. I'm not only referring to Jessica Ennis, who was front row at Mulberry, or Victoria Pendleton and Andy Murray who were at Burberry. Exports are up, admittedly from a modest baseline, despite a hellish retail climate in much of the world, and waiting times are down. Shows run disconcertingly on time. Or they do in fashion-speak. They're still about 15 minutes late, but that's an incidental. In Paris, it's 40 minutes minimum. This matters. Like the Olympics, London Fashion Week is a global platform that allows us to show what we can do, not just creatively, but technically and organisationally.

We can do quite a lot, it seems. You used to be able to rely on three or four names delivering the design goods. Now there are probably 15 or so, plus a bunch who don't deliver anything much - but that's a given in any fashion capital. Venues are plush, when they're not car parks. Front rows are no longer adorned solely with Big Brother contestants and, somehow, sponsorship continues to prop up the more hand-to-mouth designers… but why am I doing a sales pitch?

It isn't like this in New York. At NYFW, American journalists roll their eyes at the banality of many of the designers on their schedule. In Milan, Italian newspaper journalists watch the shows with a mixture of boredom and befuddlement (they don't do specialists in Italy; next week they'll be covering a motor show or be on royal-nipple alert). As for Paris, it's so secure in its position at the epicentre of catwalk fashion and luxury that if the tumbrils are rolling up those cobbled streets, no one can be bothered to listen.

London can't quite shake off the sense that it's an underdog. Not even when its bigger shows are packed with the international buyers and editors who, only a few seasons ago, bypassed the city altogether. Everyone becomes patriotic to the point of partisanship.

In the interests of objective appraisal, what we don't have much of at London Fashion Week is conventional sexiness. Apart from Antonio Berardi (or Roland Mouret who shows in Paris), British designers like to scoot around sex, preferring to flirt with androgyny, eccentricity or playing the kook card. Nothing wrong with that. It would be mind-sappingly depressing if all our designers churned out bandage dresses and trophy-wife baubles. They don't and that's why our designers will never sell as much as Roberto Cavalli or even Azzedine Alaïa. And it's why a behemoth such as Harrods, one of the most successful department stores in the world, has a relatively small stock of British labels. Sex, as William and Kate learnt this week, beats out everything else in the commercial stakes. British designers know that. The fact that they continue to view fashion as something more than - as Katharine Hamnett famously put it - clothes to get laid in, makes them all the more valuable.

PAUL SMITH

There's voluminous and then there's Royal Albert Hall. Paul Smith's billowing block-coloured dresses were heading in the latter direction. And was it just us or were there traces of last year's Chloé dresses in their wake? What Sir Paul does best is menswear for women, and he didn't disappoint, with a new, higher-waisted trouser, skinny or wider legged, in school-dinner colours: custard, mustard and undercooked sausage. Lovely printed shirts and bright blazers reminded one of a Rothko exhibition. Does one want Rothko in one's wardrobe? Possibly not, those muted trouser suits would make us very happy. LA
Verdict: Who wears the trousers? Us, please. 3/5

MARY KATRANTZOU

You think this looks pretty but straightforward? It's anything but. Those prints, based on postage stamps and extinct currencies (the drachma, the deutschemark, old pound notes) were woven into the fabrics. All the brocades were made from scratch in France. The glass beading was originally embroidered over the top, "but that looked heavy," said Katrantzou backstage, "so we looked at stained-glass windows and eventually we found a place in london to etch them…" Whereas previous dresses have tended to be bought by collectors and displayed on mannequins, these pieces can be mixed, matched, clashed and… worn and worn. LA
Verdict: Totally on the money. 4/5

PREEN

Married couple Thea Bregazzi and Justin Thornton haven't shown in London for five years so they weren't going to let a small impediment like Bregazzi's Braxton Hicks get in the way. Forget the Tens machine, this duo's patchwork dresses or trouser suits, composed of python, shiny patches and suit fabrics, delivered all the electricity a wardrobe needs. Slashed pencil skirts were layered over long contrasting floral shirts. There were lovely, diaphanous navy printed dresses, too, many of which turned out to be separate shirts and skirts, plus the obligatory sexy Nurse Ratched outfit. It was probably catastrophically complicated to produce. But it didn't show. LA
Verdict: Complex chic. 4/5

CLEMENTS RIBEIRO

Try to imagine what a cute Japanese girl living in Paris might wear. Give up? Well she'd start with a bias-cut, check skirt, free-associate over to a stripe knit and finish it off with a pair of flat jellies. Day Two, she moves on to a dirndl skirt because, while not classic hotty territory, worn right, they're adorable. While listening to some Françoise Hardy, she'll wriggle into a colourful bra, and layer a sheer, spotty pussy-cat blouse over the top. Clements Ribeiro were inspired by Wes Anderson's latest cult hit, Moonrise Kingdom. They have the charming kook's every need covered, from delightful florals to enchanting lace cocktail dresses. LA

ANTONIO BERARDI

How big can a peplum grow before it becomes a skirt? And can cycling shorts ever be sexy? These were the two urgent questions prompted by a Berardi collection that combined young-gel sportiness and sumptuous luxury, with - on the whole - great aplomb. Shorts featuring bigger-than-Aertex perforations failed to convince. But in cropped jackets, the material looked great. The carbon fibre on Berardi's loose jackets was a convincing mesh of technology and artistry and his mega-peplums - skirts, really - made for a witchy silhouette seen nowhere else in London this week. His fitted-sheath dresses at the finale were worthy showstoppers. Luke Leitch
Verdict: Molto sports-luxe-chic-sexy. 3.5/5

JONATHAN SAUNDERS

Another inventive show with a slicked-up polish. Saunders called on his muses - Michael Clarke, Bridget Riley and disco. They delivered unto him super-shiny patent and metallic A-line skirts with contrasting backs, worn with nude-coloured sweaters that left the models looking primed for a Closer-style topless shot, and bias-cut stripe dresses with a Martha Graham-esque flow. How nice to see a London designer combining comfort and practicality with hard-edged glamour. Some of the sequined dresses, suits and cardigan-skirt combos had glossy knitted backs - perfect for sliding into a banquette once you've pulled in the nightclub. LA
Verdict: Glow-getting glamour. 4/5

OSMAN

From the Indian haberdashery that he popped into while visiting his mum in Birmingham, to Japanese ceremonial bondage (he didn't reveal where he'd encountered that), Osman said he'd trawled far and wide for inspiration. The wide, three-quarter-length sleeves on his opening look - a hot-pink jacket with shorts that had scalloped hems to the rear - were 'Japanese-ish'. Osman said he'd been struck by the haberdasher's bolts of pink, lemon and blue material all piled up. He kept the dreamy draping and well-cut trousers (his brocaded ones are apparently walking out of Selfridges on their own) that make him so keenly appreciated. LL
Verdict: Iffy print aside, great. 3/5

ERDEM

Could aliens have been responsible for the power cut half way through? For the stories of sci-fi writer Zenna Henderson were the inspiration for a collection so otherwordly-lush it sent your eyes rolling into hyperspace. Embroidered fluoro-florals meshed, Borg-like, with python-skin panels and sat below oddly out-of-time ruffs. 'I liked this kind of etherealness, that outer-spaceness. But my spaceship malfunctioned half-way through the show.' The power did come back on eventually. Even had it not, Erdem's mix of come-hither slither and Stepford Wives , extra-terrestrial sexiness would have kept his crowd transported. Brilliant stuff. LL
Verdict: Out of this world. 5/5