‘For me, heritage is a foundation, not a limitation,’ said the Scottish designer Christopher Kane as he embarked on his latest chapter today: creative director of British leather goods brand Mulberry, which was established in 1971 by Roger Saul.
Taking place at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in Westminster this afternoon as part of London Fashion Week, Kane – who shuttered his eponymous label in 2023 – said that he was imagining the act of a tree surgeon chopping away branches to encourage new growth (the symbol of Mulberry, after all, is the Mulberry tree; a series of Instagram teasers before the show saw a figure hacking away at the trunk of a tree).
Christopher Kane debuts at Mulberry
So there were narrow bags shaped like the blade of an axe, slung over the shoulder and completed with Mulberry’s signature Postman’s Lock fastening. Though the idea of sharpening, of slicing away the extraneous, also inspired the collection’s garments, which were largely stripped of adornment. ‘A very streamlined, modern, stripped-back look,’ is how Kane described it after the show.
Leather, Mulberry’s signature material, was the collection’s primary material, crafted into a series of boxy silhouettes with ‘notched’ edges, recalling the construction of the flap on the brand’s Bayswater handbag (the It bag, introduced in 2003 by Nicolas Knightly, remains the brand’s bestselling handbag). These notches transformed into scale-like layers of an iridescent, organza-like fabric on a series of mini dresses, or became a split hem detail on wool sweaters.
Elsewhere, there was the element of fetish which defined some of Kane’s most memorable collections (for A/W 2019, T-shirts were adorned with ‘Rubberist’ and ‘Looner’, while the use of latex, vinyl and clear plastic – the hallmark fabrics of fetish wear – has run throughout his career). One backpack, fastened across the chest with a Postman’s Lock clasp, recalled a leather harness, while a checkered overcoat was crafted from wipe-clean vinyl and printed with trompe l’oeil tartan. Even the palette of corporate grey, beige and white had an almost banal perversity.
Kane’s early memories of Mulberry came from the ‘football casuals’ he grew up around near Glasgow, Scotland. This inspired a series of oversized polo shirts adorned with vintage Mulberry branding, while outerwear recalled 1990s parkas, albeit with the hoods extended into elongated funnel-like forms (one orange parka drew a resemblance to South Park’s Kenny). ‘It’s really about town, city, country,’ he said, imagining his protagonist for the season traversing these various worlds. Other references included school uniforms, rugby kits and British tailoring.
Alongside the axe-shaped handbags, another style saw the archival Piccadilly bag blown up in size and in new mock croc iterations. Shoes, meanwhile, featured the signature Postman’s Lock as their clasp. ‘There’s a lot of Mulberry heritage here, but it’s also very Christopher Kane,’ he said.
Kane, who continues at Mulberry to work alongside his sister and creative partner Tammy Kane, is one of the British fashion industry’s most beloved designers (evidence of this was the roaring ovation at the end of the show). His eponymous label, which at one point was part of the Kering luxury conglomerate, was founded in 2006 following his graduation from the Central Saint Martins MA and found critical acclaim, with Kane winning four Fashion Awards across his career.
The closure of the label in 2023, indicative of the wider challenges of being an independent designer in London, was met with an outpouring of disappointment from the fashion community. ‘Since he closed his business in 2023, the absence of Kane had felt like almost criminal oversight of a major talent of his generation,’ wrote Vogue’s fashion critic Sarah Mower, a longtime supporter, earlier this year.
Now, though, Kane has a second chance – and a first as creative director of a major fashion house. It is one he is clearly approaching with confidence. ‘I want to write my own codes,’ he said.