J.W.Anderson takes his girl on a ‘style odyssey’

There are always a lot of elements to a J.W.Anderson show, but the designer conducts them with an apparent ease that makes those elements seem totally harmonious. Yesterday’s show – his AW17 womenswear offering – was no exception. Ballooning skirts met ostrich feather trimmed ones, while “Dickensian” (in Anderson’s words) silhouettes came together with cuts that were altogether more contemporary, along with a futuristic chain mail-like fabric.

On paper this sounds messy, but in reality it wasn’t remotely. In fact, the multi-faceted nature of the collection tied into this season’s concept which wasn’t built around the idea of a singular muse, but a journey. “I thought, what would it be like if I created a wardrobe that was more like a style odyssey?” the designer said shortly after the show, which had been soundtracked by Primal Scream’s “Some Velvet Morning” featuring Kate Moss. “It wasn’t one character, or one girl, it was an odyssey.”

Anderson also spoke about the “femininity” of this collection which was plain to see in the freely flowing skirts and the gently cinched waists, the knee-high boots and the sunflower yellow camisole top modelled by our mini afroed fave, Lineisy Montero.

The designer said it was more feminine than previous seasons, which have been marked by their androgynous and deliberately awkward approach to womenswear, and that it reflected his ongoing pursuit of defining the J.W.Anderson woman. “I’m always trying to find that girl,” he said. “I started in men’s and then I starting doing women’s, then it became a think in terms of doing (both). I was asking, ‘How do we start to define her? How do you start to build on that feminine edge?”

There was another question that had been playing on his mind this season. After mentioning the word “ease” several times, he revealed that he had been asking the following – “Is there an ease to that girl, is there a coolness?” To which the answer is a definite yes.