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Since launching their brand, KNWLS, in 2018, Charlotte Knowles and Alexandre Arsenault have build a reputation as the brand for London-based fashion obsessives. Their aesthetic predicted and has gone on to define the Y2K renaissance, and is endlessly copied, often poorly, by fast fashion brands and other cheap imitators. All of which is to say that the KNWLS Spring Summer 23 runway show was the hottest ticket for Day 1 of London Fashion Week. A who’s who of the city’s buzziest It-Girls, Mia Regan, Lina Ripa, and Ella Richards among them, sat front row at a sprawling warehouse space for the brand’s first runway show in a year.
The collection was titled “Glimmer”, and billed by the brand as a celebration of the foundational wardrobe. “As we careen towards a future that’s never felt less certain, hope lies in the things we already know best,” read the show’s notes. Knowles and Arsenault took key sartorial staples—mini skirts, pleated shirt dresses, bias-cut slip dresses—and imbued them with an enticing kind of unfamiliar-familiarity. Mini skirts were low slung, pleated, and fastened with ring detailings; denim, including dresses and corsets, were in an ’80s-imbued acid wash; and KNWLS’ signature stretch-jersey was printed with apocalyptic-style tie dye.
In fact, ‘apocalypse-chic’ would come pretty close to describing S/S ’23 in a single phrase. Granted, this is more of an aesthetic sensibility than actual, workable armour, but the chunky shearling and leather coats, the muted palette of browns, reds, and dusky pinks, and the lashings of gold and silver hardware made this collection feel like a particularly chic sequel to The Road. Knowles joked about this backstage, saying the KNWLES woman is “still trying to survive the apocalypse”, a feeling anyone acquainted with their Twitter feed will relate to acutely.
Perhaps the most playful element on the runway was the footwear, particularly the reinterpretation of UGG boots, covered in pierced metal rings. You’d be forgiven for thinking this was a fabulously tongue-in-cheek reference to our shared obsession with the shearling boots during the years 2004-2007. It was, in fact, the fruits of an ingenious collaboration between UGG and XLNC, a new London-based talent incubator created by Fashion East. The XLNC x UGG partnership allowed KNWLS to put on their latest runway show, an expensive undertaking for even the most established fashion houses.
