COLLECTIONS

TOPMAN DESIGN – LONDON FASHION WEEK SS12/ 21.09.11

It’s been brewing all season. From Kenzo’s romantic Hawaiian idyll to Givenchy’s menacing tropical prints, Comme des Garcons’ layered pyjamas to Walter Van Beirendonck’s exuberant Caribbean patchworking and even – earlier this morning – the obliquely tribal swagger of Christopher Shannon’s monochrome tassels. But it was Topman Design who pulled all that latent, vividly eclectic globetrotting energy together, a rich, decadent Marrakesh blitz of sunburnt colours and languid silhouettes.

 

For a whole generation of postwar writers, artists and designers – from Bowles to Genet to Saint Laurent – the louche exoticism of Morocco represented a luxurious modern Eden, ripe with guiltlessly hedonistic sensuality.

 

But the success of the Topman team’s spin on this well-trodden route lay in adding a blast of breezily modern youthfulness. Intricate scarf patterns and psychedelic landscape prints were tempered with taut, long-line tailoring in sombre urban shades. jackets and silk shorts skewed the silhouette in a relaxedly schoolboyish direction, emphasised by loosely-tousled banded knits in slabs of earthy colour.

 

Bohemian in spirit but coolly urban in its’ execution, (and evocative of Scottish designer John Ray’s underrated work at post-Ford Gucci) this latest outing from Topman Design was a further step in its’ evolution into a standalone menswear voice, mining iconic period reference and filtering through its’ own distinctively London Edge.

 

Backstage Images by: Sam Wilson

Posted by: John-Michael O'Sullivan

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