DANIEL W. FLETCHER HOLDS HIS FIRST RUNWAY SHOW FOR SPRING 2019

For spring/summer 2019, designer Daniel w. Fletcher presented his collection via a runway show for the first time in the designer’s university town of London during London Fashion Week Men’s. The show, which was the first for the young designer, who has previously only put on presentations, lived up to all expectation.

For Fletcher this collection acts as a comment on the pressures of commerciality on today’s generation of young designers. Classic tailoring is turned on its head, hemlines hung out to see; bow ties unknotted yet stitched into shirt collars; trousers slashed on the rear leg and hem, exposing flesh; binding ropes holding seams together. A perfect uniform for the night’s end.

Sadistic undertones can be found in the reversal of masculine and feminine tropes and garments, corsetry and underwear worn as outerwear in hyper-male fabrics, trousers re-imagined in leather and super tight base jersey layers exposed. “Danny’s Hardware” emblazons a T-shirt – a nod to the resilience required to survive in today’s turbulent and political landscape.

Artist Caitlin Keogh also lends her work for a seasonal collaboration with Fletcher. Her paintings, reminiscent of instruction manuals, act as comment on femininity and the body as object – reimagined here in the collection’s pastel hues and printed on silk shirting and scarves. Torsos are presented as Grecian female busts, bound and slashed with ropes and chains, a remark on the constraints of business for today’s women and those who choose to enter this competitive and at times misogynistic financial arena.

Models march in footwear provided by Christian Louboutin – Oxford shoes that are implicative of business attire. Fletcher’s preppy man was once smart, now “fucked up” – an acknowledgement of the infallible battle we wage in this world.