The weather in London—and, let’s say, the general climate—is not very bright at this time, with the city affected by severe cold. It was perhaps this somewhat bleak background that made the show presented by John Alexander Skelton—a designer’s off-the-radar (or at least off-the-schedule) sleeper-hit—such a poignantly uplifting affair.
Staged in an East London church hall decorated with evergreen leaves and burning candles, the air scented with scorched yew and mulled cider, it began with a red-headed fiddler in a wide-set gray pinstripe suit – with rolled-up trouser hems. And playing the turned-up peak lapels-celebratory ditty. The feeling that you had walked around like a rowdy sailor’s jig in Victorian Cornwall was compounded by the cast of characters moving around the hall. The silver-haired dandy and the young, muscle-bound scoundrel – fixtures of the John Alexander Skelton cast – stepped onto the stage with druidic straw hats covering their faces, removing them to reveal their world-weary faces and looming over the room. Gone are the formal cut forms, but upon closer inspection the exquisitely crafted garments.
Suits came in earthy burgundy, gray and charcoal felt, always cut to curve gracefully to the body and with attractive, irregular straps that provided a clear sense of handcraft. The shirts came in the expected ecru linen, but also in a foppish floral damask, as did a pair of trousers. Together they gave the show a sense of eccentricity that made the characters seem even more believable. There was also a feeling of levity; Skelton is clearly a seriously talented designer, but he doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously
This much was made clear at the show’s conclusion, in which – in lieu of the usual single-file parade – the smiling cast were seen walking through the hall hand in hand to the rhythmic applause of the crowd. While the suspension of disbelief was mitigated a bit by the anxiety that arose from seeing fat men wrapped in bundles behind tables laden with open flames, it nevertheless became one of the most exhilarating fashion show spectacles for which this reviewer Has been present for some time. Skelton said, “I sought freedom from an imaginative idyll, in which I could create clothes that would hopefully have the power to mesmerize and ultimately even transport.” He did this with this show.