“I can’t afford to go home,” designer Thomas Tait admitted yesterday at the Dorchester Collection Fashion Prize awards in London, referring to the cost of a return flight to his native Montreal. Not to worry. A few minutes later, Tait received the evening’s top honors and his ticket, as it were: the £25,000 inaugural [...]

There seemed to be a palpable sense of confusion and then relief among editors who walked into Louise Goldin’s presentation at London’s St. Martins Lane Hotel to find just four sparse racks of clothes. Is that it? went the collective thought. On each hung the same six or seven pieces of minimal, body-con knitwear with [...]

“Everyone involved in this was my A-list first choice,” Bronwyn Cosgrave declared of the panel of judges she assembled to select the five short-listed semifinalists for the first Dorchester Collection Fashion Prize at London’s Dorchester Hotel. That sentiment, one hopes, extends to said semifinalists, too. But Cosgrave could be forgiven for a little enthusiasm for [...]

Some trends are easy to identify because they come at you all at once, like ultra-mega-platforms and leather leggings. But other trends mark eras. They’re usually the ones that sneak up on you. Take knits: Word that up-and-coming London designer Mark Fast would be designing a range for Topshop arrived on the same day this [...]

Up-and-comer Raphael Young throws around a handful of adjectives when describing his footwear—rock ‘n’ roll, punk, haute couture—but they’re all just dressing for the main modifier: sexy. “Women are the fantasy of men,” Young, who hails from Paris, told Style.com. “But the relationship isn’t reciprocal. The woman is dominant.” With this righteous imbalance in mind, [...]

As far as sweeping up British fashion awards go, 2008 was a good year to be a girl and/or in shoes. Luella Bartley, London fashion’s homecoming queen (she came back from New York a couple of seasons ago), took the chunk of Swarovski crystal labeled Designer of the Year; Louise Goldin competed against Danielle Scutt [...]

Seen once, seen twice, seen three times—yup, it’s a trend. Origami details at Christopher Kane, Louise Goldin, and at Wednesday’s Nathan Jenden show suggest the designers were inspired by the Japanese art of paper folding. But even in fabric, the results are delicate as all hell. Forget the dry cleaner; those pieces should come with [...]

Color London gray for fashion week, where the subdued hue has shown up in collections from Graeme Black’s to Christopher Kane’s. It’s been particularly popular with the city’s younger designers. Louise Goldin used icy pale grays for her geometric knit ski suits, turning the models into snow bunnies setting out for a romantic weekend with [...]