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After "How was the Versace party?" the question most people want to ask about London Fashion Week is "Why are the clothes so weird?" You might well ask. No other city has sent down the catwalk quite so many dresses that bare at least one breast. No other city would have embraced with such abandon a trend as profit-destroyingly unflattering as drainpipe trousers. Why, indeed.
In fact, London has done contrarily well out of cornering the niche market in Weird Clothes. In 1994 there were 15 shows on the London fashion week schedule; now there are 52. Apart from Burberry, very few British brands command power in the marketplace with their advertising spend; instead, they have to rely on grabbing the audience's attention by any means necessary. And if the industry has an inbuilt lean towards an art-school mentality, it may have something to do with the fact that out of the 52 designers on the schedule, 26 are graduates of one particular, highly experimental college: St Martins.
However, while London's creativity attracts attention and acclaim, this doesn't always translate into healthy businesses, as Hussein Chalayan's problems demonstrate. But maybe, just maybe, things are about to change. The first signs of a new spirit of maturity seemed to be emerging during this London fashion week. The most exciting designers are those who have a broad enough intelligence both to express their creativity and to take up the challenge of producing pieces that work as clothes - and their number seems to be increasing.
Alexander McQueen...