London Fashion Week Day Three

It all started 200 million years ago!” said Mary Katrantzou by way of explaining tectonic plates built into the bared backs of her dresses, and lace inspired by slimy green foliage.

The designer, who started six years ago the fashion for wild mixes of digital prints, had already moved away from pattern. But this undersea escapade, beginning with a runway covered with glistening volcanic chips, was an ocean away from her previous collections.

It also had a glint of Alexander McQueen’s Drowned World. But the extraordinary workmanship created an intense atmosphere, as pre-history morphed into continents and oceans, and embroidered sea creatures clung to bodices, while serpents and mythological fish made up metallic jewellery.

The audience applauded the process of the birth of the earth, expressed in both texture and colour, when fissures of embroidery patterned a bodice and the grey-green ocean shades morphed into brighter coral or sea blue.

The fashion miracle was that this was not some crazy concept, but played out with modern clothes, from slim dresses through to tops, skirts and trousers. There might be a lacy strapless dress gleaming as though dipped in seawater; or a flower-patterned fishnet dress slipped under a smart, classic coat. It was not just sea blue that marked the new world order, but also flower decorations and the opening-up of a bodice as if it were the inside of a conch shell.

There was poetry in this show, which was a tribute to Mary’s courage – and her conviction that to reach the shores of modern fashion, you have to keep on top of the wave.