If there’s a common
denominator that unites London Fashion Week, it’s the designers’ all-consuming
love for music. (This is, after all, the town that the Sex Pistols, David
Bowie, and the Rolling Stones called home). With its lyrical thread
blasting out from Somerset House to propel jet-lagged editors from show to
presentation to show, music—for Holly Fulton, David Koma, and Michael
van der Ham, at least—has also been the inspiration that has set
collections in motion. 
Koma recalled the Beatles, Elvis Presley, and Frank
Sinatra records he listened to religiously as a child and used glistening,
mirror-like vinyl discs as a starting point. Black patent peplums and amorphous
ribbed collars on abbreviated fit-and-flare dresses were large enough to entice
you to put a needle to the fabric and see what sound might emerge. “It enhances
the design process for me,” he said of the fifties and sixties rhythms that
shaped his childhood. “My parents were big collectors, so it’s always been a
big part of what I do.”
Meanwhile, Holly Fulton delved into the minds of teenage groupies and the
“obsessive kind of love they showed bands” during the era of fanzines. Cue
badges and resin hearts appliquéd onto vermillion skirt suits and cropped
scarlet jackets that had been intricately collaged with cubes of leather and
suede. If this Scottish-born designer could pick an album to underscore her own
life, it would be the sound track to French eighties romance movie Betty Blue.
“I was thirteen when I first saw it and have idolized that actress Béatrice
Dalle ever since,” said Fulton with a laugh. “So for this collection, she
was my muse.”
Michael van der Ham, however, sought out an as-yet-undiscovered talent to set
the rhythm for models striding down his catwalk on Monday. It was the daughter
of eighties model Leslie Winer, Maeve Rose, whose beautiful
rendition of the American folk song “Lizard in the Spring” rang out over a
collage of diaphanous layered dresses and printed overcoats in shadowy hues.
“The last collection was quite sweet, so I wanted to go in the opposite
direction with this one,” said van der Ham of his darker mood. “And Maeve’s
voice is quite spooky, so it complemented the collection perfectly.”
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