London Fashion Week S/S2010 - Orschel Read

LONDON FASHION WEEK S/S2010 - ORSCHEL READ

With his last season inspired by Virginia Woolf's Orlando, Orschel Read again toed the literary line with his evocation of the sated Bard's Twelfth Night. Fusing couture techniques with London's multicultural and ecletic youth, Orschel presented green and black panelled crocodile skin bomber jackets, sharply cut blazers with pointed, exaggerated shoulders and extended collars - couture reinvented for a modern male audience.

Traditional tweeds were re-interpreted with statement shoulders and paired with fluorescent orange, drop crotch pants. The drop-crotch silhouette pertained throughout the show, with incarnations coming thick and fast in tweeds, plaids, black, and that fluorescent orange with a shot of green running down the side. Jackets ranged from the aforementioned bombers to full length frock coats - again in plaids and tweeds - and statement blazers, cascading with stiff ruffles, exaggerated with leg-of-mutton sleevs and most notably folded in an origami-style; a crane determinedly making its way down the catwalk.

The final look; human hair making a reappearance in a hirsute blazer, teamed with full kiss-make up, epitomised a collection which went to step towards placing Orschel, alongside Galliano and McQueen, in the lineage of British avant-garde.