SALON

Friday, Feb 15, 2013 5:15 AM UTC

Tom Ford, Rihanna lead London Fashion Week lineup

By

Topics: From the Wires,

Tom Ford, Rihanna lead London Fashion Week lineupFILE - In this Monday, Nov. 19, 2012 file photo Barbadian singer Rihanna performs during the fifth stop of her 777 worldwide tour at the E-Werk club in Berlin. A debut design showcase by singer Rihanna and Tom Ford's first proper catwalk show in London Fashion Week are headlining the five-day style extravaganza that begins Friday Feb. 15, 2013. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File) (Credit: AP)

LONDON (AP) — Fashionistas don’t do excitement — they’re too cool for that. But even the frostiest fashion editor might be allowed a little smile of anticipation at the lineup for this year’s London Fashion Week.

A debut design showcase by singer Rihanna and designer Tom Ford’s first proper catwalk show in London are headlining the five-day style extravaganza that begins Friday.

Their star power is piling an extra dose of buzz and glamour onto a growing biannual event that already features industry leaders including Burberry, Vivienne Westwood and others.

 Securing a major designer like Ford is a big coup for London Fashion Week, but it’s the slew of hot young talent based in the capital that keeps the international fashion pack coming back for more.

 ”Before people used to skip London. Now people make a point of coming,” said Carmen Borgonovo, fashion director of luxury online retailer my-wardrobe.com. “What I love about London designers is that they’re all very individual, they’re all very unique with their own sensibility. You don’t see that variation in other cities so much.”

 The youngest of the “big four” fashion weeks, London had generally been regarded as the irreverent, idiosyncratic sibling to the slick productions in Milan, Paris and New York. For some time, it was more a place for edgy fashion college graduates than a destination for elite fashion buyers

 Yet these days London Fashion Week is a professional, pulled-together affair. Burberry packs in the crowds — and the celebrities — with extravagant catwalk display, while growing corporate sponsorship has seen editors and buyers whizzed from show to show in shiny black Mercedes. The week generates over 100 million pounds ($160 million) worth of orders, and attracts some 5,000 fashion fans from around the world.

  Still, considerable resources are pumped into promoting emerging names in London. After all, they could be the next Mary Katrantzou or Christopher Kane — young guns who have burst onto the international scene within just a few seasons. 

 This season Kane and Katrantzou will have to share the buzz with Rihanna, who is making her first foray into designing with a collection for British high street chain River Island. The British Fashion Council is calling it the “most anticipated collaboration of 2013.”

 ”This has been something I wanted to do ever since I started loving fashion,” the singer said in a video posted on British Vogue’s website. “Every time I saw something on a rack there was something I wanted to do to change it, and so I thought that the only way I could do that is by designing the perfect thing for me.”

 Ford, who has dressed everyone from Michelle Obama to James Bond star Daniel Craig, will also be showing his first official catwalk collection in London on Sunday.  The former design chief at Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent had previously only staged exclusive presentations here.

 Also on the lineup this season for the first time is celebrity favorite L’Wren Scott, the American designer who is a former model and the current partner of Mick Jagger. Briton Julien Macdonald, another designer with a starry following, is returning after a two-season break.

 In all, almost 60 runway previews for autumn 2013 will run from Friday to Tuesday.

London Fashion Week will be followed by designer shows in Milan and Paris.

More By Sylvia Hui.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 0 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
325 points326 points | 81 comments
vote
How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government -- "...much of the U.S. economic security support system consists of subsidies for the affluent in the form of tax breaks, like those for private retirement savings plans such as 401(k)s and private employer-provided health insurance."
54 points55 points | 3 comments
vote
Temple Grandin on DSM-5: “Sounds like diagnosis by committee.” When it comes to autism, Grandin argues we're paying too much attention to labels -- and not enough to individuals
30 points31 points | 3 comments
vote
With the help of Photoshop, artist Yao Lu has made shanshui — traditional ink paintings — of China's landfills
29 points30 points | 1 comment
vote
Temple Grandin on DSM-5: “Sounds like diagnosis by committee.” When it comes to autism, Grandin argues we're paying too much attention to labels -- and not enough to individuals
29 points30 points | 2 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations