David Bowie?s spirit stalks catwalks at London menswear fashion shows

Posted by Bengtsson on January 20th, 2016

As David Bowie was played before and after the Burberry show, just hours after the news broke of his passing, we were left musing on the impact the singer and showman had on menswear, especially among young directional designers. Bowie was the master of reinvention and used fashion, like his music, to express his personality.

So much of what we see on the London menswear catwalks today can lay its influence at the feet of Bowie and his collaborators. They broke the mould back in the 1970s, moving men’s fashion away from the traditions of the tailor and embracing the avant-garde and the artistic.

As fashion colleges opened, so generations of students gained the confidence, first in wom­enswear and then even more so in menswear, to break down the barriers and confront the taboos just like Bowie.

“For my generation it is almost impossible to overemphasise just how important David Bowie was, not just in terms of music and fashion, but also in terms of how we carry ourselves in the world,” Dylan Jones, Editor of GQ and chairman of London Collections: Men told London’s Evening Standard.

“His influence continues today in a way that we have yet to quantify, try as we might.”

Bowie made androgyny cool; he played with the concept of gender fluidity long before JW Anderson or Alessandro Michele at Gucci showed a boy in a pussycat bow on the catwalk. Glam rock changed menswear fashion and it is intriguing to see how far it has come in the modern world. Last weekend at the London Collections: Men we speculated about whether the autumn-winter 2016 season would have been the same without him: men wearing lace (Astrid Anderson), shiny Lurex yarns (Sean Suen), costume jewellery (Wales Bonner), or jacquard knitted blankets worn like sarongs (Sibling).

And would Jeremy Scott have sent out men wearing Day-Glo suits at Moschino with neon-sprayed quiffs and painted Doc Martens? Bowie opened the doors.

Eerily, Katie Eary acknowledged Bowie in her program notes, as well as Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, as inspirations for her autumn collection. The Ziggy graphic pattern, silk caftans, crushed velvets, metallic leather drainpipes: the gender fluidity undercurrent was all there.

Newcomer Charles Jeffrey similarly employed a bit of gender-bending, slipping skirt suits and bias-cut gowns on boys in his Lover­boy collection of painted, splattered denim and punk clobber (not to mention a Life on Mars-era powder blue suit). The references were Blitz kids from the infamous 80s London nightclub and Vivienne Westwood, another great influencer on the blurring gender divide.

At JW Anderson, the andro­gyny was a little less obvious than in previous seasons. In a real mash-up of references, he married feminine silk pyjamas with sporty track pants, leather coats, Kurt Cobain laddered cardigans, snail motifs and cartoons. “Sometimes you have to have fantasy in clothing because the world is a very complicated place,” said Anderson after the show, explaining the reason for the subversive use of cartoons and spray-painted rabbit fur. “It’s about how do you take the reality and twist it.”

An alternative way of thinking and dressing has long been part of the British fashion world, emerging from the street and music scene. Urban sportswear at labels like Bobby Abley, Liam Hodges and Sean Suen still references the baggy club gear of the hip-hop era, but mixing it up with shiny show-off metallic leather, bold graphic prints or grungy punk face piercings.

Faux piercings were a legacy of Alexander McQueen, another great influencer: safety pins “piercing” cheeks, dripping chains attached to Victoriana insignia earrings gave boys their own “Savage Beauty” — to coin the title of the recent McQueen retrospectives. McQueen designer Sarah Burton created classically elegant tailoring inspired by military and ceremonial dress with satin-trimmed greatcoats and scarlet cavalry jackets fastened with moth and butterfly buttons, another house signature. The jackets were trim but the trousers looser and more relaxed than in the past.

A military theme ran through many collections, with uniforms, ceremonial dress, trench coats and battlefield khaki a key inspiration. Craig Green explored the idea of protection, taking his love of uniform and utilitarian aesthetic, and stepping it up a level by adding to his khaki coats and jackets face-concealing hoods of the kind that you might expect for biological warfare — well, almost.

Burberry, in contrast, showed ceremonial coats, hybrids of naval greatcoats and Household Cavalry jackets with lots of spiffy red piping and gold buttons, slipped over sporty pieces like funnel-necked zipped blousons, jogging bottoms and trainers.

Coach similarly used naval greatcoats and army surplus parkas for inspiration, while Belstaff looked all set for the Antarctic with lots of explorer-style down jackets, hi-tech parkas and shearling trims targeting the cold adventure biker. This seems to have prompted them to shoot their current campaign with the legendary polar explorer Ranulph Fiennes.

Sam Lobban, buying manager for Mr Porter, felt the London menswear shows give buyers a great start to the season “and often show us some foresight of what to expect from the Milan, Paris and New York men’s shows”.

“If that’s anything to go by,” he says, “military definitely feels set to feature on the fashion radar, with a clear 70s take in a lot of instances. There were also a number of different iterations of the 90s tracksuit, which is something we felt starting to come through for SS16.”

This was noticeable among the tailors on and off Savile Row, where there is a real move towards more relaxed formality. The cut is easy, so trousers ranged from loose to jogging styles, although there were still tailored, slim, cropped looks. It also meant lots of layering with cashmere sweaters, tweed, alpaca and camel hair coats and smart wool pea coats from Dunhill, Hardy Amies, E. Tautz, Oliver Spencer and Gieves & Hawkes.

“It is all about simplicity and versatility,” says Darren Barrowcliff, the new head of design at Hardy Amies.

There was plenty to gaze upon at the London shows, now in its eighth season, whether your tastes are for modern tradition or something with a bit of the Bowie wow factor.

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