Gimme shelter: trenches and knits to the fore at London Men’s Fashion Week
Protection from the elements was the dominant theme of London autumn-winter menswear collections, and bottle green the go-to colour, for what some expect to be a wet and bitterly cold 2016 season
With Britain having been hit by record-breaking winter rainfall and severe flooding, it was hardly surprising that rainwear and other items of clothing to swaddle oneself up in was high on the list of designers’ priorities when the menswear autumn-winter 2016 fashion season opened in London.
Of course, Britain doesn’t have the infrastructure that we have in Hong Kong to cope with these extreme weather events, but a good raincoat from Burberry, Craig Green, E. Tautz or Xander Zhou is going to be an essential in both places.
A quality trench coat is the stock in trade of Burberry and Mackintosh; the latter has added a white version of its signature rubberised cotton raincoat and a second-world-war era army cape to its collection. Military influences prevailed at Burberry as well, with gabardine trench coats, army-style parkas and some ultra-smart dark cavalry-uniform outerwear – lots of spiffy red piping and gold buttons. This is the first Burberry collection to unify all its labels under one name, and also marked Chinese singer and actor Kris Wu’s catwalk debut.
Craig Green explored the idea of protection, taking his love of uniform and the utilitarian aesthetic and stepping it up a level by adding to his khaki coats and jackets face-concealing hoods of the kind you might, perhaps, expect for biological warfare.
