When Russell Sage put a heap of gleaming coins center-stage at his show as payback to his mortgage-lender sponsors, Britannic Money, the audience had an opportunity to contemplate the deeper symbolism: Can UK fashion stay solvent?
If money was in the spotlight, though, talent—and lots of it—was also on display. As his first model appeared in a waisted, full-skirted dress made from eighteenth-century golden silk curtain fabric, complete with tassels fringing the hemline, Sage instantly proved the value of British designers gloom-busting resourcefulness. He followed up with equally spirit-lifting, richly romantic one-of-a-kind pieces fashioned, Scarlett O Hara-wise, from antique drapes. Sage s silhouettes might be vaguely outlined on 1950s couture volumes, but his crafting of materials, raw edges, arty embroideries and jigsaw-puzzle piecing are strictly 2002. And after mastering the new feeling for gilded fabric, he effortlessly nailed another major trend: brilliant chunky knits. Working with Bidyut Das, a knitwear graduate from the Royal College of Art, Sage sent out a spectacular high-waisted gray wool dress, knitted in graduated stitch to fall to the floor in sculptural waves. Wound along one arm was a huge spiral glass armlet with a $25,000 diamond embedded in it.
Cash-poor but imagination-rich, London designers like Sage still have the optimism (not to mention sponsors like the Diamond Information Centre and Swarovski) to help them face the challenge of staying afloat. "It s really tough," he says. "But I don t think I could show anywhere else. And remember: McQueen and Chalayan came out of London s last downtime."
