Florals and lace dominate at Preen, Roland Mouret fashion shows

Fashionistas can expect soft feminine looks for their wardrobes next spring, with labels Preen by Thornton Bregazzi and Roland Mouret showing plenty of ruffles and lace at their London Fashion Week shows on Sunday.

Preen designer duo Justin Thornton and Thea Bregazzi used floral prints for their spring/summer 2019 dresses, which came in various styles.

Models wore one-shoulder ruffled dresses in lace as well as silk frocks with voluminous shoulders and sleeves. Different kinds of floral prints as well as types of materials were often mixed together on deconstructed dresses with overlaying panels.

Some gowns were short at the front with a longer tail at the back. Round-collared tops, also with exaggerated sleeves were cropped at the stomach and paired with drawstring shorts.

Like other shows at London Fashion Week, the looks were finished with socks and sandals. Neck scarves had a belt buckle detail at the front.

There was also lots of lace at Mouret’s show, where models walked on an outdoor catwalk under a clear blue London sky.

Mouret, whose dresses are worn by celebrities and royals, chose an overall fluid, loose silhouette for the collection, using a pastel color palette as well as some graphics and prints for the outfits.

He said his line “plays with an introvert sexuality” and looked to female independence. Show notes said the French designer drew “thematically from the 1974 softcore pornographic film Emmanuelle, with its sub-text that spoke for women to unapologetically own their sexuality” through to the #metoo and #timesup movements against sexual harassment.

“Women across the world have found strength through the community of shared experiences,” Mouret said. “Women are the voice of our society, and this is what I want to express in the collection.”

Models wore dresses that bared shoulders or fronts, tunic tops, loose wide-leg trousers and pencil skirts, all slit to show panels of black lace.

The looks were accessorised with pointy lace-up mules and high-heeled rope-tie sandals. Models also wore badges reading “woman up”.

“The idea of real romanticism that’s been on so many of the runways from New York ...(is) certainly very apparent here in London as well,” Ken Downing, fashion director at Neiman Marcus, told Reuters.

London Fashion Week, the second leg of the month-long catwalk season which began in New York, runs until Tuesday.