Christopher Kane: grandma chic London fashion week

You know you've got a hot ticket on your hands at London fashion week when you find yourself schlepping halfway across the city to get to the venue. That's what those of us who aren't important enough to have a chauffeur driven Mercedes had to do to get to Christopher Kane's autumn / fall 2011 show on Monday morning. Lesser designers wouldn't dare to position themselves so far away from the main drag lest they deter the public transport-averse fashion pack from attending. No such problem for Mr Kane. The likes of Anna Wintour, Emmanuelle Alt and Daphne Guinness assembled in the far from glamorous surrounds of a concrete basement in west London for possibly the most highly anticipated show of the week.
Why so much anticipation? Simply because Kane's collections have been so consistently strong since his debut in 2006. Often, this strength lies in taking an ostensibly dowdy starting point - last season it was prim and proper Princess Margaret - and turning it on its head. Likewise, today the show opened with the kind of square blanket crochet that you'd sooner expect to see on your Grandma's sofa. It was transformed into surprisingly chic black and blue knee length skirts and even meshed with one of Kane's perennial winter favourites, black leather.