This year the opportunity arose for me to attend the shows and presentations of some of London Fashion Week’s more independent and up-and-coming designers. Amongst the wealth of talent showcased this year, I noticed a vaguely discernible division of many of the brands I saw into two broadly perceptible aesthetic groups: on one side the streamlined, elegant, pastel-paletted workwear-esque delights of designers such as Shopyte, Riona Treacy, Wen Pan, and Isabel Manns, and on the other the edgier (for lack of a better word), darker, more youthful, grittier, street wear-esque creations of the likes of Underage and Polish designer Pat Guzik. Perhaps this polarisation was as not as strongly pronounced outside of this small collection of designers, but the contrast of sartorial moods produced a refreshing interplay of light and dark from one show to the next, in what can feel like a very long week in the fashion calendar.

Words & Photography by Georgia Corrigan.