Avant-Premiere AW16 Fashion Week Showcase in London and Milan

Words: Josh Milton

The fashion landscape is one of exploration. In a bustling marketplace of hovering your mouse over and adding to basket to access the newest strands of clothing, accessing the under the radar visuals beyond the ones that just land in your email Inbox each day can prove a challenge.

Avant-Premiere was first kicked off back in 2013 to hook luxury brands with independent and commercial consumers. This time around, they’ve taken to London and Milan to bring their showroom to the very heart of some of the world’s most stylish urban spaces.

London Avant – Premiere AW16 Designer Showcase

For decades a backdrop of pigeons picking away at Mc Donald’s, throngs of tourists powdering from Leicester Square, Soho was a pretty unlikely haunt for the creative folks of the queer scenes, let alone London Fashion Week.

Slotted into the heart of Soho in the stripped back, wooden aesthetic of The Ham Yard Hotel, was Avant-Premiere’s AW16 Designer Showcase.

With Berwick Street car park, for its second season as the new home of London Fashion Week just around the corner, the venue couldn’t have been more fitting. Speckled with an array of brands, dabbling luxury items with the more commercial and independent, the Avant-Premiere showroom was dotted with fresh up and coming brands.

Avant-Premiere AW16 Fashion Week Showcase in London and Milan

The event took off with a colourful array of bloggers swinging through to Ham Yard for the most aggressively British act you can do - afternoon tea. The bloggers had a hands-on look at the vibrant array of brands studding the rustic halls of Ham Yard. CALDER’s preppy initialised jackets rattled into the slow, soft tailoring the brand is known for. Feather.M’s handbags prowled around the rurally lit space. Drawing on art deco and organic visuals, from fish to leopards, Feather.M’s energetic aesthetic was a definite pulling card for bloggers.

As the bloggers sipped their tea and the sun fizzled out to the evening, the launch of Unseen Online kicked off. The digital platform connects creative talent with the modern day consumer, through curated editorial shopping segments each issue. The concept also worked with designers present at the Designer Showcase events, such as House of Ronald, Hellen Van Rees and Ross & Brown. House of Ronald’s cleanly chopped luxe dresses and silk knits was contrasted by Hellen Van Rees’ textural interplay. Meshing chromatic knits with refined silhouettes, the sleek lines of Hellen Van Rees’s aesthetic ran into frills of buckled knitwear and tweed.

Avant-Premiere AW16 Fashion Week Showcase in London and Milan

Intercepting with accessories came Ross & Brown’s smooth sunnies. The eyewear brand examines urban spaces associated with timely eras, from Paris to Milano.

Milan Avant-Premiere AW16 Designer Showcase

After 7 seasons of exposing hidden talents in the world of emerging fashion brands, the stylish Avant-Premiere AW16 Designer Showcase floated over to Milan, taking with it their in-house brands and new talents to reveal to the vibrant fashion crowds of Italy.

Avant-Premiere AW16 Fashion Week Showcase in London and Milan

The afternoon tea and evening cocktails were set in the cozy Yard Boutique Hotel. Brands from as far and wide as Germany, the Netherlands, London and Milan intermixed with the eclectic surrounds and interiors of the hotel, entertaining guest such as the likes of Editor and Chief of Vogue Mexico, Kelly Talamas and Antonio Moscogiuri, editor and chief of c.a.p.74024.

Avant-Premiere AW16 Fashion Week Showcase in London and Milan

Healthy cocktails were provided by the stylish Holy drinks and Piu Cinque Gin, decorated in flowers and served to the growing crowds. These were a welcome pick-me-up in a busy week, igniting creative conversations to

Avant-Premiere AW16 Fashion Week Showcase in London and Milan

flow. FAUDA’s gentle, Bohemian dresses captured the playful, flowing spirit of Italy. Darning more of Italy’s rich aesthetic history was Panizza, lifting the hat back into the guts of elegant attire. Paving the way to Acephala, whose rebellious visuals shake up traditional shapes and forms with flexible fabrics.

The showcase was a hit in both fashion hubs, having previously created waves in London with this unique networking event, a buoyant hum of music and creativity, the additional extension to the fashion capital of Milan has only strengthened the relationship Avant-Premiere has with buyers, press, bloggers and brands. We look forward to attending and uncovering more of the events this coming season.