Fashion Fringe Runway

Fashion Fringe Runway
It was, in a way, rather touching (and perhaps inevitable) that London's newest young-designer initiative should end up feeling just like the old days-mammoth boozy party in a multistory car park, loud contingents of gate-crashing fashion students, and a group of recent graduates' clothes on the runway.

But this is the 21st century, not the Ab Fab eighties, and the event was Fashion Fringe, the culmination of a nationwide competition to find the next generation of talent, instigated by veteran London Sunday Times critic Colin McDowell. Fearing a decline in the excitement about London fashion-not to mention the perennial lack of funding-he corralled serious sponsorship from Red Bull and others, and wound up with �10,000 to bestow on the winner.

In the event, a panel including Burberry CEO Rose Marie Bravo, British Vogue editor Alexandra Schulman, Hamish Bowles of American Vogue, and Giles Deacon chose the showstopper of the evening as winner-a collection by Basso & Brooke with hugely inflated leg-o'-mutton shoulders, nipped-in waists, and draped pants, all smothered in kitsch yellow-brown-green seventies prints. There were inevitable comparisons with Giles Deacon himself, not to mention a scintilla of Victor & Rolf