Victoria Beckham chose a light and fluid silhouette for the female wardrobe next spring, presenting a line for “women in motion” at her London Fashion Week show on Sunday.
With her husband David and their children watching from the front row, Beckham said the spring/summer 2020 collection highlighted her love of contrasts, mixing tailored suits with floaty dresses and pale neutrals with bold colours.
The former Spice Girl turned designer, who has also launched a beauty line, opened the show with sharp trouser suits in check, cream or light colours.
The outfits were layered: jackets or coats over large-collared shirts, which nodded to 1970s styles, with the latter on top of rollneck tops. Trousers were long, straight and high-waisted.
Dresses came in purple, yellow, green, bronze, black and softer colours, and were cut in various styles: from halterneck and asymmetric to low-cut and long-sleeved. Most had feminine ruffles on the neckline, shoulders or waist. Some had floral patterns.
“Lightness, easiness, freedom. Those are the ideas I was thinking of for this collection. It’s about dynamic women today, women in motion,” Beckham said in show notes.
“Controlled and free, living life, reality and believability. There is always a duality in women, moving between different ideas, different moods. I want clothes that move with a woman, that move with her life.”
Beckham also had dabs of prints in the collection – floral or scribbled-like handwriting.
Skirts were calf-length, pencil-shaped and slit at the front and sides, adding to the sense of fluidity. Beckham also put ruffles on shirts. Accessories included floral neckpieces, large brown sunglasses and colourful heels in purple, turquoise and other bold shades.
Ahead of the show, around 30 demonstrators from climate activist group Extinction Rebellion staged a protest outside the venue, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, seeking to draw attention to the fashion industry’s impact on the environment.
Holding banners reading “Fashion shouldn’t cost the Earth” and “The Ugly Truth About Fashion”, the protesters gave speeches chanted slogans like “Fashion equals ecocide” and “Repair Rewear Rebel”.
While walking to the venue, the protesters temporarily stopped traffic on the way while grouping on a main road for a few minutes at a time.
Extinction Rebellion, which has staged protests in recent months calling for action to tackle climate change, had called on London Fashion Week organisers to cancel the five-day industry event where designers are unveiling their latest womenswear lines.
At the Friday opening, a small group of its activists glued themselves to a door of the main Fashion Week venue and poured out a “bleeding” red carpet.
Earlier on Sunday, Japanese influences prevailed on the Preen by Thornton Bregazzi catwalk, where models wore tops with Manga comics prints and floral dresses.
Preen designer duo Justin Thornton and Thea Bregazzi opened the show with black and white looks before presenting an array of pastel-coloured lace, silk and see-though ruffled frocks.
Dresses came in an array of lengths and styles – frilly, layered, floaty, with puffed up sleeves, slits or slim-fit and in bright colours or floral prints.
London Fashion Week ends on Tuesday.
