Fashion East's Menswear Installations

Oh what a day! Yesterday was truly a celebration of menswear design talent in the capital. The eclectic bunch of designers came together beautifully to showcase how diverse menswear can really be. Yesterday, saw the exciting launch of NEW GEN Men with James Long and Carolyn Massey kicking off proceedings and then of course there was MAN later in the day which continues to be a great vehicle for launching and nurturing new talent. I've written show reports for Topman's blog (which are now live) for all of the designers involved in these shows so I don't want to speak about them again just yet. For me, nothing represented the diversity of menswear more than Fashion East's Menswear installations.

Just a few of the many highlights on show as part of Fashion East's Installations

To walk around the East Wing of Somerset House and the Vaults uncovering the beautiful alongside the weird and wonderful made me feel like a rotund little kid in a sweet shop once again. Instead of ordering quarters of Toffee Crumble and bottles of Panda Pops to wash it at down, I was salivating over Mr. Hare's hot steppers, HbyHarris' H Jacket, the Afropunk of Casely-Hayford, the spiked fetishwear of Jaiden rVa James, Sibling's skull print Breton jumpers and the list goes on and on...Here are just a few of my favourite installations...

The above slip on hot steppers are on my Spring/Summer want/need list. From left to right, Sir Jablonsky and my current favourite, the Victor Boa.

After my first mad dash round armed with my camera and notepad I decided to take a breather and headed to Mr. Hare's room where I could talk shoes and listen to to his dancehall mixtape. For his showcase room, Mr Hare created a little jungle and those inside were certainly getting a little primal over the soft leathers and cutaways...

The King Tubbys! These suede numbers are certainly going to cause a stir on the blogosphere...

As mentioned previously each shoe is named after one of his favourite dancehall generals, Cachao, King Tubby, J.Dilla, Jerry Lee Lewis and even Phil Spector all feature. As well as the introduction of these new models, Mr Hare reworked a number of highlight models from his debut collection. The below tanned version of the Kerouac's are just beautiful.

The Levan and the reworked Kerouac.

We got an exclusive look of Casely-Hayford's SS10 collection yesterday with their leading look book image but this taste only intensified my hunger to see the collection in full. Regular readers will know just how much I loved their AW09 collection and I was eager to see what they had in store for us next.

Casely-Hayford's Kings of the Kings Land.

For SS10 the design duo took inspiration from the Kingland Road area of London, a seemingly unique and uncoventional corner of the city where original EastEnders co-exist with the more recently landed public school boys. For me, when I think of the area my stomach begins to rumble as I think about the abundance of tasty yet cheap Vietnamese restaurants. For the Casely-Hayford's the incongruous social mix conjures up a rich sartorial vocabulary. The area is home to more artists than any other part of London and these creators have spawned a plethora of contemporary visual statements which have collectively forged a template for a new English style.

The pattered trousers of 80s style body builders originate from King's Gym. Chic, streamlined sportswear of the area has become something of a uniform of the modern day Rude Boys. As embroidered brogues and printed garments fuse elements of traditional English tailoring with the ornate embellishment of Turkish handwork and craft.

The palette is understated and somewhat subdued using their signature colours of mushroom, navy and cream but vibrant colours burst through the collection with accessories inspired by African textiles.

The emphasis is on lightweight tailoring, super light outerwear, transparency and print. For Casely-Hayford SS10 is about a dangerous elegance and I'm not frightened of a little danger now and then.

The last area which I'd like to quickly mention before I bore you all is H by Harris's padded cell which was located deep in the vaults and showed off his quilted accessories. We interviewed former stylist Harris Elliott back in August but this was the first real chance I had to inspect the collection up close. As mentioned previously, the debut H by Harris collection comprises of two lines, the Q hand quilted nappa leather and the SH wax hide leather collection. Styles include rucksacks, totes, weekend bags, satchels and laptop skins and of course the H jacket which I've been drooling over for some time and even more so now I've seen it.

H by Harris' H Jacket.