When the first London Fashion Week took place 40 years ago , Margaret Thatcher was practically part of the furniture in Downing Street, just half way through her decade-long grip on power. Sarah Mower – observing in 1984 as a baffled bystander rather than the seasoned Vogue critic she is today – recalls witnessing a “great gang of people charging the catwalk in parachute-silk shirts with flying tails, cotton-drill utility trousers and, as I remember it, Dunlop plimsolls”.
He touched on many of those issues in his speech to guests including London designers Simone Rocha, Erdem Moralıoğlu, Nicholas Daley, Christopher Kane, Harris Reed and Dame Zandra Rhodes, as well as the legendary make-up artist Pat McGrath and supermodel Naomi Campbell.