A sunkissed prelude to London Fashion Week, which officially kicks off tomorrow, Tuesday night’s Kiko Kostadinov womenswear show was a love letter to summers been and gone. Held in an intimate salon setting just off Brick Lane, shadowed by East London skyscrapers, designers Laura and Deanna Fanning had their sights set on their native Australia. “The collection was a bit like a trip down memory lane,” explained the pair, who haven’t been able to return home since the pandemic began.

Feeling nostalgic, the sisters began thinking back to their adolescence, in particular, their beach getaways as kids, where over 30 of their friends and cousins would pile into a small beach house. “You’d go camping and share each other’s clothes,” said Deanna, “maybe putting on your best friend’s cardigan that’s a little too small for you. Or your dad’s linen shirt, a fabric that you wouldn’t normally wear.”

Thinking of salty skin, aloe vera-ed tan lines and toes coated in sand, the pair’s retrofuturistic womenswear – synonymous with geometric shapes and spiral pattern cutting – felt loose and free. Sunset hues glazed space-dyed ribbed cardigans, which came asymmetric, turned upside down and held in rippled formations like a crisp towel on damp skin – worn over satin slip dresses with knitted cut-outs that looked coral-like. Elsewhere, figure-hugging “bootleg” jeans and chiffon twinsets printed with Australian daisies felt made for places like Barcelona, where you can emerge from the beach and head straight into the bustling inner-city.

Models walked wearing seashell necklaces – like you and your siblings would make on long August days – and carried new iterations of the brand’s Trivia bag, as well as a new accessory: the Twisted Spiral Shopper, a glossy, lemon-yellow number that elevates the everyday tote. Stepping back out into a somewhat chilly East London, it felt like we’d just returned from a beach getaway of our own. In the words of All Saints, take me to the beach.

Photography by Chris Yates.

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