London Show Rooms at Tranoï Week

AW19 represents an illustrative reconstruction of the 1920’s and its androgynous Bright Young Things. The long, lean flatness of Art Deco fashion plates is echoed in dropping waists, lengthened silhouettes, hand-drawn prints, cloche-hat hair and twin-stitched tailoring. There are lashings of trash-to-treasures jewellery á la Nanacy  Cunard; playfully irreverent stuffed-fox tippets; millinery evocative of Erté; underscored in spirit by the jolly frivolity of Cecil Beaton’s portraits of his fast, fearless BYT set and balloon-clad “Book of Beauty” subjects.

Graphic symbols and pagan fairies are transformed into embellishment on flapper dresses. One raw-edged dress is cut from singular piece of fabric, seamless in it’s seamless in its inception and construction. The LOVERBOY tartan is seen through myriad ways, a mohair coat with chunky hand-stitched chain seams; melded with shepherd’s check on a Chelsea-collared trench; kilting pleats occasionally peeping out of skirts, bias-cut on chain-seamed patchwork dress.

British designer Bethany Williams presents her collection “Adelaide House” following in the environmental and socially enterprising foundation laid with her SS19 collection “No Address Needed to Join”. Working in  collaboration with Adelaide House, a woman’s shelter based in Liverpool, one of only six such facilities in the country. Adelaide House provides a safe place for women leaving prison with various needs including domestic violence and homelessness. Bethany has also worked alongside Giorgia Chiarion, who has illustrated the women of Adelaide House and created abstract paintings inspired by Liverpool’s landscape.

Liverpool was the first city in the UK to have social housing. The city forms inspiration for the collection, as well as the number of female, socially engaged politicians that have helped support their community. In an interesting twist on the ongoing discourse around gender, when a man buys a piece from this collection, the proceeds go to supporting some of society’s most vulnerable women. To support Adelaide House, Bethany is donating 20% of the profits from this collection. As with every season the collection will be produced from recycled and organic materials. Bethany has worked alongside Liverpool’s The Echo Newspaper, utilizing their waste. For example see the coat pictured below made entirely out of recycled newspapers – an incredible piece!