Alexander McQueen’s frock coats and frayed lapels turn heads at London Collections: Men

London: Only the slickest of brands can pull off shabbiness with real panache.

The Alexander McQueen menswear show staged as part of London Collections: Men, was a masterclass in the art of producing a sharp catwalk show with a romantically dishevelled feel.

Staged on some disused cobbled under the arches behind King’s Cross, the brand had employed the services of a hawk for four days prior to the show to scare away any errant pigeons who might defecate the catwalk. As guests arrived, a team of backstage hands were misting the cobbles with water to keep up the raw, faintly Edwardian feel to the set. A creeping cloud of smoke announced the arrival of the models.

And so it was with the clothes. Behind the sun-faded fabrics, the tarnished gold buttons, the ripped away sleeves and frayed lapels was the strict rigour of precision tailoring. The kind of razor-sharp cuts that keeps McQueen at the top of the menswear game and the cash tills ringing.

Sarah Burton, the label’s creative director, said her inspirations for the show were ceremonial dressing and the rites of passage of a man. Frock coats printed with lace and worn with cropped above the ankle trousers followed loose long shorts worn with cardigans made from the silk lining of suits. The well-known McQueen skull motif appeared reworked on cotton lace and printed on to silk jackets. Collarless bib shirts, engineered brocades and metal-toed Derby shoes completed the look. As a show it looked strict, strange and turn-of-the century. Broken down for the shop floor into shirts and overcoats it will be cut to perfection and make for the kind of modern tailoring that men will invest in.

Designer JW Anderson continued his exploration of what he terms “unisex” clothing earlier in the day. The seasoned menswear front-rowers were unblinking at his first outfit — a strict black tunic top that skimmed the model’s bottom, which was worn with a pair of wide-leg fluid trousers and accessorised with an envelope clutch bag. This is, after all, the designer who showed mini dresses and ruffles last season.

Blurring the boundaries between menswear and womenswear is all part of this much-lauded London designer’s agenda.This time it was the inclusion of a transparent floral halterneck top that was the intentional eyebrow raiser and which fast-forwarded his design philosophy one step further into the “challenging” territory.

Backstage, the designer said that the look represented a search for “newness in necklines”. Immediately after the show, buyers looking to translate the catwalk show into hard sales when these clothes hit the shopfloor next summer were unfazed by what is already being dubbed the ‘man-halter’.

Damien Paul, menswear buyer at matchesfashion.com said: “Whether this translates into a hot new trend in menswear isn’t really the point. The JW brand is all about questioning and pushing the notions of men’s fashion. We always find that Jonathan takes these strong themes from the show and cleverly translates them in the showroom for an easier way to wear.”

One trend emerging from the shows that men will undoubtedly find easier to wear could be termed the army surplus look. Fisherman’s hats of the type worn by the Stone Roses’ drummer Reni were spotted at both Margaret Howell and at US streetwear label Rag & Bone. Howell also showed canvas hooded windcheaters which had an army-surplus-meets-Julian-from-The Famous Five feel about them. Meanwhile Rag & Bone sought to resurrect the combat trouser from fashion’s wasteland. It showed multiple versions in navy and chalk white worn clean cut utilitarian tops and tapered at the ankle.