As London Fashion Week kicks off this Spring/Summer 2012 season, Dazed Digital speaks to a few of our favourite designers ahead of their upcoming shows about the inspirations behind their designs and new collections. The like of bstore, Lou Dalton and Peter Jensen give us a sneak preview of their lines to come this week...

Cooperative Designs

The Cooperative Designs Spring/Summer 2012 collection juxtaposes hard “city” elements such as the Gherkin tower, high rise flats and street lights against soft “country” elements such as hills, cherry blossom, starry nights, clouds and winding country lanes. Inspiration stems from Sohei Nishino’s Diorama Maps exhibition.

Lou Dalton

Inspiration for the Lou Dalton collection: The Miners strike 1984 -1986, The Pitman painters & Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake.

Peter Jensen

The collection is inspired by Nina Simone, so there's a few African touches and lots of print. I like this picture from one of our fittings, it's going to be much more styled up in the show but Erika looks great like this I think.

bstore

This season bstore's direction and inspiration came from an idealised, imagined individual. We recognised aspects and traits of this created personality and then mapped out his travels, hobbies and cultural preferences and created a wardrobe for him that referenced these points.

We imagined that he was at the end of his private education cycle, frustrated, bored with his stuffy, suburban sports filled weekend life. He was inspired by his only creative outlet, watching movies from the late 50's and early 60's, especially from the what was then entitled, the new wave of italian radical film makers, such as bertolucci and visconti. He was eager to emulate the life of the lead male characters from these films and visit the sun drenched, exotic locations of visconti's 'death in venice' and bertolucci's 'sheltering sky'. His wardrobe represents his past and his future travels. There are the favourite pieces from his sports life, private school colours stripe sweat, t's and rugby shirt mixed with his new life staples, loose linen and drill trousers, double breasted linen blazers, plaid check shorts and matching blazers. His look he describes as, 'a modern english privileged colonial', always dressing for the occasion.