London Fashion Week September 2024: 40 Years

Happy 40th to London Fashion Week! 🎊🎉

Well, it's only 5 days long. I've barely settled in and it's over. Fashion Week is about what's hot and what's not. 

This year what surprised me was the public school fashion which makes the wearer look like a schoolgirl. There's something disconcerting about this. Let's see now. Teenage girls adjust their uniform to not look like one but grown women wear it as a fashion statement. Statement of what?

 Infantilizing women? 

Something society is doing by constantly reiterating women should stay safe and all the do's and do nots to go with it, like don't stay out after dark which is basically trying to impose a curfew on them. What do women do in the depths of winter - never go out? It's the biggest nonsense out. Why put the responsibility onto the women? Besides, if women were to ignore it and all stay out late, the streets would become automatically safer. Otherwise, only men have the freedom to walk down the street, day and night. 

Or sexualising teenagers? 

Something which endangers young people, unnecessarily making them objects of male fantasy. Girls then develop unnecessary fears and develop false perceptions which skews their reality. 

Click here for an overview of the fashions at London Fashion Week in September. 

In all fairness, the Kent & Curwen label behind this collection named 'School', are best known as a male fashion house so this brand is probably very comfortable with shirts, ties, and jackets. School uniforms fit into this. The company was started back in 1926 by Eric Kent and Dorothy Curwen who had a creative business partnership together and were married in 1932. However, only a few years later, Eric died in 1939. Dorothy carried on another few decades, dying in 1972. 

The company began by specialising in ties for Oxbridge. Cricket jumpers were another specialisation of theirs. Their brand aims to convey eccentric Britishness through tailoring, sportswear and runway fashion. They have appealed to clients such as the Royal Family, including Diana, Princess of Wales. 

David Beckham was their poster boy but he ended his partnership with them in 2020 and the company was sold to Ruyi, a Chinese company which was a textile manufacturer. That didn't seem to work out. They are now owned by another Chinese company, Biem.

Daniel Kearns is the new creative director. He is also their menswear designer, since 2023, although he was there from 2016-21. His concept was, as I understand it, to go back to the history of Kent and Curwen hence, the public school look. Although they've tried to incorporate genderless styles too, and some outfits are more creative reinterpretations of British School uniforms, other designs I think are too gendered and literal, without much inventiveness or twist on them at all. 

Take a look for yourself at Kent & Curwen's Spring/Summer 2025 Collection on their website, the season that they presented at London Fashion Week this month:

SS25 Collection