MAN S/S 2018

Mood board: MAN is (thankfully) totally bonkers. The seasonal presentation of menswear’s freshest talents plucked straight from design school by Fashion East founder Lulu Kennedy is now in its 12th year. The landscape of fashion might have changed exponentially with a drive towards commerce over creativity, yet Kennedy and her team still know how to curate a cast that will be sure to inject some energy and verve into the seasonal offering. S/S 2018 had extreme denim, Vaudevillian drag and silicone surrealism.

Best in show: Swedish born RCA graduate Per Götesson, showing for his second season with MAN, presented languid tough clothes in utilitarian fabrics. His MA collection explored radical volumes for denim and for S/S 2018 Götesson scaled up jeans and exposed stitching on coats: ‘It’s about finding new ways with denim,’ he said. Götesson collaborated with London-based jeweller Husam el Odeh who elevated found objects; a cigarette dipped in silver became a broach, pink shells were fashioned into earrings and necklaces.

Scene setting: The mood at Fashion East is always one of openness and extremism – the sort that John Waters would be proud of. This season, designer duo Eden Loweth and Tom Barratt (known collectively as Art School) debuted at MAN with a gaggle of non-binary eccentrics. Each paraded Art School’s brand of quotidian queer couture with charming élan. Rottingdean Bazaar cast a series of household objects (matchsticks, keys, copper coins, scissors) in lightweight polyurethane foam directly onto cotton jersey separates worn by models including Central Saint Martins tutor Gail Evans and the English performance artist David Hoyle.