To wit, Stevie Sims (daughter of David Sims and Luella Bartley), Sofia Testino (daughter of Art Partner founder Giovanni Testino), and Ella Richards (granddaughter of Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg) all walked—nepo baby discourse be damned—while the closing look was worn by the blue-blooded beauty editor Tish Weinstock. Yet elsewhere in the lineup was Consani, of course, along with Vogue cover star Precious Lee and the non-binary model and poet Kai-Isaiah Jamal. For Ives, the casting reflected his vision of what high society looks like today, and the (relative, at least) democracy of who you might find in those spaces in London. “Obviously there are still a lot of social barriers in London, but when you get all these people in one room, it does feel like those barriers fall down,” he said.
What made the collection truly shine, however, was Ives’s thoughtful use of upcycled materials. Ives is one of London fashion’s most eloquent young voices on sustainability, but he’s also cautious to only speak on what he really knows. “I think everyone needs to be a little more honest about what we’re doing on that front,” he said. “There’s a lot of buzzwords flying around all the time, and I’m not sure many people really know what they mean.” For fall, his horror at the wastefulness of our consumerist world was subtly woven throughout: many of his jersey pieces were made from deadstock military surplus, something he describes as an example of “waste in more ways than one,” while a standout silk bubble dress was made from a Qing Dynasty wall tapestry, which he deliberately left in its raw state (unlike, say, the restoration process he embarks on with the piano shawls he sources from antique dealers). It served as a potent reminder of the beauty to be found in the discarded and forgotten.
Which leads us to that final look: a white organza gown hand-embroidered with cast-off headphone cables sourced from an electronics factory. (Ives is nothing if not a fashion nerd, and you get the sense that the idea of closing each show with a bridal look is catnip for a designer who grew up idolizing the great French couturiers while flicking through his monthly issue of Vogue.) Worn by Weinstock, it was duly paraded around the room, then stood pride of place in the center as the models took their final walks to Björk’s “Headphones.” It turned out that Ives’s inspiration actually lay in his frustration with the idea of the junk drawer. Here, though, Ives turned trash into treasure—and even the haughtiest of Capote’s Swans couldn’t turn their nose up at that.
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