Harvey Nichols AW11 Show

Fetish Dressing

Apres Ski

Alexander McQueen dress

Nicole Farhi dress

Apologies for the quality of the pictures, my phone doesn't perform amazingly in dark lighting.

So last night I went to the Harvey Nichols fashion show, held at Manchester Town Hall. It was an amazing venue for it, really grand, and the organisers had put a lot of work in to make the catwalk and backdrop look pretty spectacular with an urban nature kind of theme going on. 

We had pretty awesome seats right at the end of the catwalk so had a great view of the models coming down the runway. There was a number of different collections, with differing themes such as Apres Ski, Fetish Dressing and New Androgyny. Each collection showcased pieces from various different designers, all of which were available to buy from Harvey Nichols. 

Designers that featured in some of the collections included Christian Louboutin, Alexander McQueen, Nicole Farhi and Roberto Cavalli. To be honest, I wasn't hugely blown away by some of the pieces on show, I especially thought the Menswear was quite disappointing. I think having been to Graduate Fashion Week in June, where a lot of the pieces were very conceptual and abstract, it was hard to be equally as enthusiastic about more traditional pieces. Saying that, there was some gorgeous tailoring on show, and I really liked one of the dresses in the Fetish Dressing collection (picture above). 

This was the first real fashion event I'd been to in Manchester (I'm used to having to travel to London for them) and I did really enjoy it. It was a great atmosphere and nice to be among like minded people who have an equal passion to my own about fashion. I've always thought that Manchester was lacking in good fashion shows, so it was really nice to go to one that was organised well. 

In the future, I'd really like to see independent retailers and organisers developing catwalk shows, possibly in conjunction with some of the Universities around the area providing fashion courses to inject a real sense of innovation and creative flare. Organisations like Manchester Fashion Network are a real asset to the city and do organise networking and informative events for those working in the industry - it'd be great if they could extend their reach and start to organise more large scale catwalk shows throughout the year. I think there'd be a real market for it here and help to establish Manchester as a reputable creative hub for Fashion outside of London. I do however, realise large scale shows are extremely expensive to put on, one of the main reasons I fear, has prevented this from happening already. But hey, a girl can dream...

All in all I had a fab night, it was a brilliant atmosphere and a really different night out in Manchester. Bring on the next one! 

Soph xx