Mood board: A fashion show proves perfect fodder for stylists planning a conceptual fashion shoot or an editor evolving a trend story. Look at the audience at Rejina Pyo’s shows and chances are they’re drawing up a S/S 2020 shopping list. The designer’s skill lies in her ability to create pieces women want to wear right there and then. No fashion week theatrics, just real ready-to-wear, in a spectrum of life-affirming, slightly off-kilter tones, from tangerine to taupe. What you’ll be wearing come spring? Sexy cotton short suits with crafty mismatched buttons, gingham skirts with jangling wood bead fringing, 1980s shirts with leg-of-mutton sleeves and sultry 1970s patchwork denim. Shopping basket full.
Scene setting: High ceiling gilded rooms, ornate churches and art galleries are favoured London fashion week venues. There was more realism behind Pyo’s show venue of Holborn Public Library, which opened in 1960. Chairs lined the large ground-floor reading room, and its accompanying cantilevered mezzanine balcony. It would be difficult to operate a no-phones policy in Pyo’s library: guests in her signature dresses and skirts were on hand ready to Instagram S/S 2020’s envy-inducing pieces.
Finishing touches: A sign of her evolution, Pyo’s catwalk was peppered with men wearing unisex styles, like casual short suits printed with painterly beachside scenes, colourful suiting and two-tone denim. §
