The Four Seasons hotel at Ten Trinity Square opened earlier this year in the former Port of London Authority headquarters, a Beaux-Arts creation whose conversion into a hotel was repeatedly disrupted when the builders stumbled upon the Roman remains of Londinium. Beady-eyed Wickstead thought the domed Rotunda bar, its circular walls depicting beautiful friezes of earth, wind, water and fire, would be perfect for a fashion show in the round. So, she laid a snow white carpet, served cookies (in monogrammed boxes) and pink cocktails on silver trays, and sent out models in a rich spectrum of raspberry, mimosa, Kelly green and cobalt blue.
"I was thinking about the Cotton Club, the Savoy, the Harlem Renaissance," Wickstead said, in her breathless post-show excitement backstage. "And those people moved from the Deep South to Harlem, and were dancing and singing and writing poetry, and I wanted clothes that reflected that need for movement.” Accordingly, the trousers were slung lower than her usually waspish, high-waisted shape; the dresses given generous swooshing skirts and the jumpsuits cut with room for manoeuvre. "I wanted to capture that happy, elated feeling of self-expression," continued Wickstead. Certainly, numerous confections prompted wide smiles from the coterie of glamorous women on the front row – in particular, a cherry red drop-waisted dress, high at the neck but with a neat cut-out on the chest; the rose-printed column-dresses, speckled at the bust with tiny pearl beads; and the rose gold empire-line sequin numbers, complete with matching sequinned bag and dancing shoes.
Occasionally Wickstead came a little unstuck. Her experiments with volume - ballooning sleeves, ballooning skirts, ballooning backs - were majestic when the hemlines were raised to allow for breathing space, but a few dresses looked a tad on the heavy side, their rich fabrics unable to sustain the lightness of the organza opening looks. Wickstead is at her best when she keeps her silhouettes modern, colours super sharp, and fabrics breezy. There was lots of loveliness here, in any case.
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