YCB road tests this season’s biggest trends at LFW
The fashion weeks are all about the clothes being paraded down the catwalks; without them, none of us would be there in the first place. But there is of course the unspoken but glaringly obvious rule that fashion week attendees must dress to be seen too.
There’s plenty of time – in between shows, standing in line before being seated, catching up on emails in a coffee shop – for eyes to wander, drinking in every detail of each glamorous, or edgy, or laid-back-chic woman’s outfit. So, we took LFW as an opportunity to do a dress rehearsal for the trends with fashion label Marc Cain. After all, if you can’t wear something at London Fashion Week, where can you?
Metallics
Like magpies when anything shimmery is involved, we’ve been sold on the metallics trend for a long time, so we didn’t need much convincing to road test this one! Our gut instinct was that the metallic trend (we love this bag!) works best in the evening, so we paired an oversized silver Marc Cain bag with a pristine white body con dress for cocktails at ME Hotel.
However, we soon realised that this trend is way too incredible not to see the light of day, so the next morning we loved being able to throw on a pair of cork wedge silver lace ups and, thanks to that bit of glisten and shine, already feel like we had made an effort! Likewise, Marc Cain’s bronze metallic clutch is a great way of giving your usual neutral colours a bit of an upgrade for a day in the city.
Layering with long jackets
We’ve spotted this look becoming more and more prominent amongst street style bloggers over the last few months, and we suspect it’s going to become particularly practical as the winter temperatures slowly begin to get milder. We won’t want bulky coats, but will still need a cover up. This is where long jacket / cardigan hybrids step in, not only keeping out any springtime drafts, but making a serious sartorial statement.
It’s perhaps not one for the faint hearted though, as it requires confidence and conviction. A long line jacket with a fantastic print can of course be worn with fairly neutral pieces underneath, but in order to make the biggest impact, patterns, textures and colours need to clash. We’re talking florals atop dots and 3D mesh over delicate silk.
Normcore
Of all the current fashions we road tested at LFW, this was perhaps the hardest for the YCB team to come to terms with. Don’t get us wrong, we adore it on other women – in fact, we’re supremely jealous of those who pull it off with such style and grace – it’s more that we’re used to our stilettos and bejewelled empire line dresses. For us that’s the ‘norm’! But as Karin Veit, creative director of Marc Cain, reminds us: ‘dress down styles are the order of the day’!
Skirts, Karin tells us, are playing a key role, and should be casually combined with sneakers. We have to admit, we were almost embarrassingly early for all our shows on the day we wore Marc Cain’s sneakers because, we suppose, we had been given the gift of being able to walk faster. Denim jackets are going to be big news this season too, a trend that Marc Cain has translated in to a classic trench too. Plain white shirts are given a modern update with ombre hems, and can be dressed up with an oversized statement necklace tight around the collar. (Sorry, we couldn’t help but get a bit of sparkle in somewhere!)
