Barely a few looks into today’s Margaret Howell show, and one thing became absolutely clear. Howell has been effortlessly doing for years—decades, actually—what so many designers are now grappling with; seamlessly bringing together the vision of how women should look and how men should look, especially if they’re walking the runway at the same time. Well, you’re not getting this directly from Howell herself, but from my own thoughts on the subject after seeing her terrific show. So, to all those busy thinking about contemporary fluidity, here’s a hot tip if you’re at all interested: It’s mind-set first, gender second.
That’s how you can, as Howell did for Spring, build a whole collection, world in fact, on the likes of crisply belted single-breasted olive raincoats for all sexes (I could have waxed lyrical about these coats the entire review but don’t worry, I won’t) and likewise, the cotton drill or deep indigo denim pants, some slouchy and trailing the floor, others rolled at the cuff above the ankle to control their tapering volume. Elsewhere, there was a virtual ode to the wearability—and interchangeability—of the collarless shirt, here cut from a cotton soft enough to billow ever so slightly, yet sturdy enough to be able to take a decisive tailoring. It was cut long to extend way past the hem of a snappy bomber or over a full skirt cut from a shot silk whose luster shifted in the light.
Some of these pieces are firmly already in the vocabulary of this designer, others—like the polka-dotted collars on the camp shirts or the half-zippered utilitarian sweats—brought a burst of newness. Yet really, in the end, it all comes down to the same thing. Howell sees the preoccupations of those buying her womenswear and those buying her menswear as pretty much the same: utilitarian, understated, and user-friendly enough to sit working away in anyone’s wardrobe for years and years. Even the tweaking of the classics—the desert boot reinterpreted as a derby; the white cotton plimsolls, part of a collaboration with British sportswear company Fred Perry, launching next May—don’t scream One Season Only. (Meanwhile, can we just hear it for the word plimsoll; time for that to make a comeback, please.)
Howell also showed a few very athletic one-piece maillots and (what I imagine were) hybrid cycle shorts–swimming trunks. These were styled with yet more of those shirts, likely for two reasons. Firstly, there’d be something a little too naked about showing them alone; where’s the romance, where’s the story? And secondly, she is a British designer; after all, when is it ever really warm enough in the U.K. to be wearing swimwear without some kind of cover-up? You see: Always pragmatic.
