Designer Vivienne Westwood blurs the gender lines with boys in skirts and dresses at men’s fashion week in London

Boys in frothy skirts and gold dresses and girls in trouser suits: so very Vivienne Westwood. The show for her autumn/winter 2017 collection, the last event at London Fashion Week Men, merged her menswear line MAN and women’s Red Label and delivered tailoring and patchwork knitwear both sexes can wear.

Westwood is passionate about saving the planet, so slogans, photo-montages of herself and tribal mask prints and headgear were a recurring theme, mixed in with menswear that ranged from tailored country checks to1980s-style double-breasted suits with voluminous trousers.

Westwood is among a handful of designers using a single show to present fashion for both sexes this season. Although fashion is worth £28 billion (HK$265 billion) to the British economy, there is no doubt that last year’s Brexit vote and a slowdown in fashion exports to China has proved a double whammy to the industry, and so it makes economic sense for designers to present their seasonal men’s and women’s lines together. The issue is when: now, or at the women’s collections next month. Andreas Kronthaler shows the unisex line he designs for Vivienne Westwood in Paris in March.

Joe Casely-Hayford, a womenswear designer of the 1990s before setting up the Casely-Hayford menswear label with his son Charlie, has reintroduced womenswear to celebrate his label’s 30th anniversary. London has also gained rap-star Tinie Tempah as a designer, who debuted his What We Wear label on men but who says it will be a unisex collection.

This makes for a confusing time in the fashion business. British menswear designer of the year Craig Green is nevertheless very clear about his priorities, and in a standout collection his ideas mixed deep-sea mariners in their sou-westers and loose-fitting rain gear with carpetbaggers in what he describes as their “English pub carpet meets Aladdin” coats. There was the padded survival gear for which Green is famed, with all its extraneous strapping, and some of his familiar workwear silhouettes, but there were also his first ventures into tailoring with soft jackets wrapped with large rouleaux tube belts.

J.W. Anderson, like Green and Westwood, is another big lure for press and buyers. The colourful autumn winter collection had overtones of the ’70s, with lanky youths in saggy knits and tabards trailing long scarves and super-stretched sleeves. Homespun crochet patchwork was a recurring theme, along with prints from stained glass windows.