Martine Rose convened another of her phenomenally heart-warming, powerfully directional shows in London on January 6. Roses were everywhere—grandparents, parents, sisters, brothers, cousins, and her children. Friends stood, whooped, danced, and cheered while the models—a cast of her favorite local heroes—proceeded to high-style it out. It was part Vogue ball, part riotous community fund-raising event—a night packed with laughter, warmth, and a wow-factor surprise. Because here was Martine Rose serving drop-dead elegant fashion.
Phones were banned, but she’d had the show filmed, and released it at a screening during the Paris menswear. And then—another surprise—she did the show again for the fashion crowd tonight.
“I was sort of just deconstructing what I care about, and what I really think is important,” she’d said on the night of the London show. “Which is how clothes can make you feel transformed. I really think this is a message now: to make something that felt joyful. I always talk about community a lot. I thought well, let’s actually do a community show, let’s do something that feels collective and empowering and fun.”
She asked the audience to put away their phones because, “I didn’t want the focus to be on anything other than that moment of transformation and pleasure. There’s always the problem that phones pull us away, distract us and remove us so much from from the situation we’re in. And I really wanted that everyone should be present, to just be here with us in this room celebrating these amazing people who have been transformed by clothes.”
On came a guy in an electric blue moire suit, with a matching shirt and bolo tie, proudly owning the runway. Out stalked a pair in sharp pointy heels, crombie coats, neon green skinny jeans and shirts, hair piled into towering bouffant curls. This was not the streetwear take you might expect of Martine Rose. Something else was happening: wrapping, draping, and asymmetry. First, it was with men’s technical jackets or shirts recut almost like ponchos. Then the womenswear: a satin-edged blanket was turned into a chic one-sleeved tunic, worn over leather jeans. A body-celebrating black leather dress came sexily draped and knotted about the wearer.
Martine Rose already occupies a highly regarded place as a major influence on men’s fashion. This show demonstrated those powers all over again—who else could’ve come up with that furry brown lurex pinstriped coat-suit? Up to now, the fashion she’s designed for women has been more of a casual cool-girl mirroring of the twists on sport-genre clothing she does for men. But with this collection—with its incredibly cool elegance—she showed that she’s easily as inspirational a leader in women’s fashion.
In difficult, fearful periods such as the one we’re living in, fashion’s instinctive response is to go sober, safe, and stick to tried-and-tested “commerciality.” The trouble with that is that it causes paralysis, dullness, and a downward spiral in desirability. With this collection, Rose went completely in the opposite direction—for the elevation and elation of dressing; for creativity and the high ground.
At the end of her London show, lots of friends, family, and children took their own turns on the catwalk. It finished up with a raffle in aid of St Giles Trust, a UK charity that helps people held back by poverty, homelessness, exploitation, and abuse. On all kinds of levels, she’s a woman who shines.
