At an appointment a few days before her debut collection for Fforme took place, Frances Howie was explaining her vision for the label. She talked at length about draping, tailoring, fabrics sourced in Italy, the handcraft and construction that went into the garments, and her love for color. “The female form was the starting point for this collection in every way,” she said.
When the show began, what seemed like an almost throwaway statement suddenly seemed exactly right. Except it wasn’t just that she was thinking about the female form meaning the body, but form as in a configuration, as in a manifestation of womanhood. The first model came out wearing two chocolate brown jackets (short layered under long), wrapped around her body and tied with a thin belt adorned with a horsehair-like charm that was in fact made from old violin bows. Her hair was pulled back and where her bangs should be were a series of feathers. She was followed by other young women in very serious suiting, with strong shoulders and extra long sleeves.
“Tailoring is a really important part of what we’re doing and it’s being made by three generations of tailors in Italy who are literally making each jacket by hand,” Howie explained. “They’re in limited production, they’re a tiny factory.” While undoubtedly gorgeous, on some models they seemed like an experiment in trying something on for size—does this vision of power fit me?—and on others they felt like they had already found themselves. On the soundtrack, the British artist Betty sang: “Mum says/ That I’m god’s gift/ I think she’s right/ She always is.” The tension added a bit of excitement to the runway, though it would’ve been great to see it explored further with the addition of a few older models.
It had started slow, a fringe running down the side of a pair of trousers, or fringe exploding from underneath a classic cat coat; but suddenly a youthquake hit the runway, with a playfulness that’s seldom seen with these labels that trade in “modern luxury.” “I love the idea that clothes move. I think it’s important that there’s a sense of movement,” Howie said. And boy was there ever! A sleeveless black gown with a very deep v-neck surrounded in fringe was the garment version of Stevie Nicks at her witchiest twirling on a stage, a woven jacquard tunic had been frayed at the ends, and paired with a suit (the pants with fringe at the side, naturally); while the two finale dresses, made from hand-cut squares that were fringed and then applied to a dress and a coat, had the personality of Animal performing a drum solo. “We had quite a lot of fun with this to be honest, we sort of started fraying and we couldn’t stop.”
Elsewhere, the body remained the focus: a white hammered silk dress had an undulating dropped-waist, that was naturally occurring when the bias-cut bodice met the skirt cut on the grain; it was both futuristic and deeply sensual. A cropped wool and mohair melange jacket had been hand-twisted into an almost rosette shape on the front (they’d simply put in a little bit of wire and “twisted the edges”). Even the simplest pieces, like a turtleneck and pencil skirt in crinkled and wrinkled silk in an unexpected shade of flamingo pink, seemed designed expressly to delight. On the soundtrack, the Swedish singer-songwriter COBRAH sang over and over about “gooey fluid girls” against a booming electronic beat, and it was abundantly clear a new Fforme had entered the villa.
