London Collections: Men – Day One

In which we enjoyed beans on toast in Bedford Square Gardens and cooed over Dalmatians.

Despite two days back in the office last week, yesterday being a Monday and being the first day of the second ever London Collections: Men, it really spelt the end of the holidays for Team Clash. No bad thing mind, with all the goodness London had to show. Our first day back on the job-proper-went something like this…

Lou Dalton kicked off proceedings with a collection inspired by the North Sea oil boom of the 1970’s, translated to the catwalk this meant lots of paneling, a smattering of tartan and black PVC combats. Leaving Lou we journeyed to Bedford Square Gardens to celebrate ’60 years of Conquering Everest’ with Bally, and their celeb pals Rick Edwards and Carl Barat; tin mugs and beans on toast made for an interesting change from popcorn and champagne.

Orlebar Brown hosted a static presentation too (with Snapple and photobooth fun), and was followed by our first stop at the Topman Show Space for Topman Design. Taking over the ground floor of last season’s venue, the collection saw blocks of white followed by orange followed by berry red followed by navy, and plenty of parkas. 

Three hours later it was the turn of MAN; Astrid Andersen gave her guys metallic lips, Fila trainers and full looks in lilac and gold, while for his first date with MAN Craig Green offered lots of deconstruction and fantastic wooden headpieces (both in xs and xl). Agi & Sam replaced last season’s moustaches with sideburns, adding rosy cheeks, brolly’s and dogs to proceedings.

We stopped by the Hentsch Man store to witness their tattooed fellas donning monochrome separates, before making a break for the Fashion East installations. Newbies to the Fashion East family, Joseph Turvey wowed everyone with his Dalmatian pups and prints, while Bobby Abley put one of his boys in a spaceship and renewed our faith in glitter hair spray (all over the partings, genius).

Kit Neale showed SW1 some Peckham love with his peroxide blondes in a greasy spoon (in the rather plush interior of Number 3 Carlton Gardens); Maarten van der Horst went all black and white on us (with ‘M’ logo socks!); Nasir Mazhar offered patchwork sweats and a bucket on the head…in the best possible way.

Our day came to a close with Mr. Richard Nicoll’s slick show. Clean shades of grey, navy and orange were set against even cleaner shapes, with gelled back hair keeping it proper tidy like.

Trend of the day? Leather trousers, as seen at Lou Dalton, Topman Design and Richard Nicoll.

Tunes of the day? Best Coast played pre-Topman Design, Kendrick Lamar played pre-MAN and Talking Heads' 'This Must Be The Place' for Richard Nicoll's finale.

Day Two happening now over on Twitter: @clash_fashion.

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