Fashion week emerges from the Covid pandemic with a new look as a generation for whom upcycling is the new normal has taken center stage: dressing up is back after two years of fashion tumbleweed, but the rules have changed.

For 25-year-old fashion designer Conner Ives, the ideas that spark his vintage and streetwear cocktail dresses don’t start in a sketchbook, but in the Sheffield warehouse where he combs through old t-shirts in search of precious stones that he can cut and assemble. in party looks.

“We spend hours sorting through piles of t-shirts, and what we make depends on what we find that day.” On other days, Ives wakes up to 50 photos of vintage piano shawls, sent via WhatsApp messages from a dealer in Pakistan, from which he chooses the most interesting pieces to rework.

“I want to deconstruct the idea that occasion is somehow the best fit,” Ives said during a preview at his studio. “Personally, I always prefer a vintage T-shirt to a new one, it’s so much more romantic.” Second-hand clothes make up 75% of its raw materials and the brand’s hang tags carry the motto “Quality things are not afraid of time”.

Ives was recruited by Rihanna to join her design team while still a student at Central St Martins, and already has a dress on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Exhibition in New York.

But after two years of restrictions, her show on the opening day of London Fashion Week, in what was once the car park of Selfridges, was her very first experience on the catwalk. In the 26-piece collection, a Parisian tourist stand t-shirt became an hourglass mini dress, its curves matched to the iconic outline of a shimmering Eiffel Tower. Two heather gray t-shirts from the sports team were combined in a long column dress with a macrame fringe skirt.

“The sideways design is a promising business model, because there’s so much clothing in the world already,” says Ives. But the use of found objects presents a challenge for production. While customers can request a color scheme when placing an order, each of the dresses patchworked from old T-shirts or sewn from vintage piano shawls is unique. “It’s a different way of doing things, and the only way to know if we can scale this business is to try,” the designer said.

One of the biggest moments of London Fashion Week will take place simultaneously on a catwalk at Tate Britain and in the Metaverse.

The fluid silhouettes and painterly colors of the Roksanda brand, whose sophisticated dresses have a loyal following among art-world clientele and on the red carpet, are far from an obvious fit for the metaverse, where the aesthetic is game-driven and so far leans towards cyborg metals and animal fantasy.

In a tie that reflects how seriously the fashion establishment now takes the metaverse, designer Roksanda Ilincic has teamed up with the Institute of Digital Fashion to create an NFT dress that will go on sale in a range of formats ranging from £25 for one of 500 3D renders, to £5,000 for one of 10 3D animation renders with software files allowing an avatar to wear the dress in the Metaverse.

“For me, the beauty of the metaverse is that anything is possible,” says Ilincic. “A dress that changes color, or disappears and reappears – if you can imagine it, then you can make it.”

She feels that resistance to the Metaverse is likely to be futile. “I look at my daughter and I see that I can see that [digital] is clearly where his generation is headed. The metaverse looks a bit like it did when e-commerce started and the luxury industry didn’t want to know – and look how it turned out. »

However, the designer admits she was surprised by the complexity of producing the digital version of a dress that will be featured in her exhibition at the Tate Gallery. “I thought you just had to press a button to get what you wanted, but it’s a lot more complicated,” she laughs, adding that she hopes fashion can “infiltrate” the metaverse.

“Fashion has so much to offer. It not only brings glamor but also a story of design and creativity that can create a richer digital environment. I hope the metaverse can become a place where many different generations and groups of people can find beauty.

A week of 86 live shows sounds like good news for most fashion week fans, but Caroline Rush of the British Fashion Council is the most excited about the 61 events that remain digital, believing a hybrid model is best suited for a modern fashion industry.

“Designers are now thinking about who they need to walk into a room and who they can talk to in other ways,” she said Friday.

Young Londoners in the tracksuits they wear to the barbershop were the inspiration for a lyrical and stylish hybrid show by Saul Nash, a 29-year-old who is one of the city’s most up-and-coming fashion talents. Nash choreographed dancers wearing his clothes in a short film set in a Kensal Rise barbershop, then invited a small audience to watch a live performance of the routine.