What would London Fashion Week be without the excitement of a Rolling Stone daughter or two? Jade, Lizzy, and Leah have all done their part in seasons past, but now it's time to make way for the Richards girls, Theodora and Alexandra. For the launch of Eleykishimoto Ellesse, the teen sisters were up there on the podium, striking silly pretend-tennis, pretend-sexy poses for all they were worth, in a matching pair of turquoise-and-white printed cotton playsuits.
Naïvely colorful and quite obviously unserious in its sporting intentions, this new line is a collaboration between London's Welsh-Japanese husband-and-wife team and the Ellesse brand. With its red-and-white striped jersey shorts, printed handkerchief tops, multicolored shorty cotton smocks, and zippy jackets, the line looked more reminiscent of eighties calendar girls than Olympian sportswomen.
That, said Mark Eley, was exactly the point. "We had a free rein, and we thought we'd leave the technical sportswear to people who can do it properly," he said. "Ellesse to us is a nostalgia thing. It meant seeing Bjorn Borg at Wimbledon, or sunny girls in St. Tropez, who go to the tennis club—but who only do lunch."
