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The LFW street style trends which work for real-life

LFW London Fashion Week  - Shutterstock
LFW London Fashion Week - Shutterstock

Street-style photographers at fashion week usually cluster around influencers, buyers and editors like ornithologists snapping away at a flock of rare birds – not least because there is often someone wearing a feathered dress in peacock green or canary yellow. But over the last week, photographers have had to retrain their eye as there wasn’t a single sequin skirt, neon coat or velvet jumpsuit in sight. There was barely even a high heel.

This is a stark change from every other fashion week of the last decade. In the late Noughties, Scott Schuman of The Sartorialist turned the fashion audience into as much of a spectacle as the clothes going down the catwalk.

Since then, street style has exploded into the industry, launching the careers of countless influencers and turning magazine editors into mini celebrities. Naturally, this pushed some of us into wearing evermore outlandish outfits that made one man in my life ask why I was going to work in fancy dress.

The atmosphere this year was completely different. Some of this was because shows were reinvented as salons and private appointments, and numbers were restricted for the few scheduled live events. As a result, invitations mostly went out to editors rather than the usual roster of influencers whose careers were made by being splashed all over Instagram.

LFW London Fashion Week Street Style - Shutterstock
LFW London Fashion Week Street Style - Shutterstock

At Bora Aksu – the first of only three live shows – we were shown into a pretty churchyard in Covent Garden in the autumn sunshine, each editor on their own socially distant park bench. Caroline Rush of the British Fashion Council sat opposite me in navy blue print dress and flat shoes and Laura Bailey was a few benches down in a pale blue dress and biker boots.

The click-clack of stilettos hitting cobbled streets has been replaced by, well, silence, as we remain wedded to the shoes that got us through lockdown. The audience this month was almost entirely in Birkenstocks, trainers (mostly Nike and Converse) or ballet flats, with a few penny loafers and heavy ankle boots thrown in. Over the week, I didn’t see one heel higher than two inches.

The colour palette was also more muted than usual, with lots of khaki shirts and jackets cropping up in particular. Worn buttoned up with beige midi skirts or thrown over jeans and a white T-shirt, they are a great staple for the disrupted autumn that is coming our way – try Arket, & Other Stories and Toast for good cuts in moss green and beige.

LFW London Fashion Week Street Style -  Shutterstock
LFW London Fashion Week Street Style - Shutterstock

Continuing the colour theme were trench coats, which were ubiquitous (Claudie Pierlot and COS have a good range this season) and worn with jeans and ankle boots, or buttoned up with embellished Birkenstocks. White also featured heavily, but it was of the loose cotton dress variety rather than intimidating, “don’t eat anything near me” fashion white.

When there was a burst of colour, the silhouette remained relaxed. One attendee wore a loose cobalt blue cotton dress with sandals and a jacket slung over her shoulder; another paired a long coral pink skirt with a matching jumper and black trainers. Handbags were pretty but practical cross-body styles, with none of the mini-bags of the past that could barely squeeze a lipstick inside.

In fact, there was barely an impractical outfit in sight. Other than one or two embellished exceptions, none of the get-ups at fashion week would have looked out of place at a socially distant late summer park picnic. And perhaps that is not all bad.

cos stories boden toast  zara
cos stories boden toast zara

Pleated skirt, £120, Boden; Trench coat, £150, COS; Crossbody bag, £125, & Other Stories; Green shirt, £215, Toast; Fur flats, £39.99, Zara

Lockdown or not, the truth is that most women don’t wear sequinned skirts or feathered jackets out to dinner. And sometimes it is good for the people who set the fashion agenda to put together outfits that aren’t geared towards getting likes on Instagram, but which large swathes of the general public would actually want to buy. Looking around the show audience this last week, I got lots of ideas for what to wear in real life rather than just in fashion life.

That being said, when this is all over I plan on getting out my brightest, most bejewelled clothes, wearing them with red lipstick and high heels – and yes, looking like I might be going to a fancy dress party.

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