Hot talent Richard Quinn was always going to have the problem of outdoing himself: At last season’s show, the Queen sat in his front row and later handed him the inaugural Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design.
This time around, the Queen wasn’t there, but Quinn still held his audience in thrall with a show of shimmering couture-inspired silhouettes while members of the London Philharmonic Orchestra performed live. By the end, the audience was blinking away tears.
“It was their first time playing a London Fashion Week show,” Quinn said proudly from backstage. He said he wanted classical sounds because “I was trying to react against what is going on right now with all the hard, techno music, and maybe bring it back to glamour and women feeling like women and wanting a desirable dress without feeling bad about it.”
Quinn said he wanted to push color, print and hyper-glamorous shape to the max for spring. “In these dystopian times, there is a search for the things that can light our way.”
It was a season of statements for Quinn, who also drew attention to a decline in funding and attention to arts education in the U.K. “Arts subjects are under threat in
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