The return of Christopher Kane via his debut as creative director of Mulberry was the most anticipated event of London fashion week. Held in the Brutalist surroundings of the Queen Elizabeth II conference hall in Parliament Square, it signaled his intention to make a clean start for the leather brand Roger Saul founded in the 1970s, cut through with coded references to his own life as a designer.
“I wanted this really clean, modern aesthetic for the brand,” he said. “I suppose she’s very Christopher Kane at the center, but the world is also very Mulberry.” The rounded, double-notched closure on the gray leather coat he sent out as an opener provided the first look at the graphic he was about to play. Several looks in, it dawned: he’d lifted the design of the flap on the iconic Bayswater bag, and transformed it every which way throughout the collection.
Soon it was cut into horizontal layers on tiny leather skirts and dresses, indented in hemlines, on collars and in sweaters. “It’s our way of doing a logo, but without saying it,” he said with a laugh. There was a big Mulberry logo emblazoned across the chest of an oversized polo shirt in look 4, though. Kane and his sister Tammy, who’s working alongside him at Mulberry HQ, had discovered the original in the house’s archive. Kane said it had jogged a memory of their first awareness of Mulberry: “It was taken up by football fans on the terraces in Scotland when we were growing up. We loved finding that.”
Other salutes to Mulberry’s origins were slipped in, subtly celebrating Roger Saul’s clothing designs from the early ’80s. A signature ‘country’ check on an oversize raincoat reminded the siblings of the tartans they knew as children. Kane had looked at Saul’s success in interior design and reprised a floral wallpaper print on a strapless cotton dress, and found old adverts showing Mulberry’s eyelet lace skirts.
It’s been 20 years since Christopher Kane founded his own brand, and three since he closed it. His comeback read as definitely more mature; appealing broadly to daywear and perhaps to a more affluent lifestyle market; a woman as well as a teenager. Most importantly, the Kane siblings have started burnishing Mulberry’s bag business for the future, introducing shapes called the Axe and the Chop, and harnessing one of them as a backpack. Considering they only took over the design studio at Mulberry’s HQ in Kensington Church Street in the early summer, it was a show that took a long, confident stride into the future. For winter, there’s sure to be much more of that town-and-country vibe to come.