We were in an extremely long, pretty dank railway arch with a model-trippingly rough concrete floor and a drip, drip, drip from the ceiling. Way up at the top of this runway the show began with the gristly throb of a revving motorcycle engine and a headlight beaming up toward the photographers. Backstage afterward, Rejina Pyo said of this new-for-her milieu: “It’s a reaction to all the things that are going on the moment.” Such as? “Are you really going to have me make a political statement? Trump, Brexit, everything—the coronavirus!”
You cannot dispute that the causes for Pyo’s anxiety are reasonable, nor that this “found” space—like all of her show venues, including last season’s public library—was part of an environmental awareness that made her one of the few designers this season to resist the siren call of the printed invitation and send them by email instead. That beginning felt like a sort of Sarah Connor moment: We were going to see a badass assert some control of the chaos around her.
The problem was that the context really did not suit the clothes. Pyo is among the most charming and supportable designers in London—it was to me a joke that she won as an “emerging” talent at the British Fashion Awards when she has built such a strong business from scratch: She “emerged” long ago. However, these women looked less like Connor and more like they were rushing from a Clerkenwell Pilates class to the board meeting of an Islington arts collective: Their greatest concern was not rooting out Trump but picking up a flat white en route. Post-apocalyptic it was not.