Christopher Kane Spring 2023 Ready-to-Wear

How great it was to experience the buzz of seeing Christopher Kane back—showing a collection that was, forgive the pun, a body of work. It was a work about the body—there was even an explicit anatomy lesson being read on the soundtrack. “I’m dissecting a woman. Dissecting her in the best possible ways. It’s forensic. In a good way!”

And it was definitely about his own body of work. Here were Christopher Kane’s clinical obsessions, his taste for dodgy materials mixed with sweet-and-innocent ones, his chainmail and cup-cake shapes and his frank praise of sexuality, all metabolized in new ways.

As usual, he pushed viewers’ heart rates up with the sight of the unexplainable: dresses with clear vinyl body-brace straps with inset lace bra cups, for a start. Really pretty pastel organza and white lingerie-lace edged skirts, doubled up into loops. Then bouncy little mini-crini dresses of a Kane kind, suspended from geometric panels he described as “sliced with a scalpel.” Scottish cashmere cardigan-capes. Patent kitten-heel pumps with bunny-ears.

He’s printed a nurse’s dress and sheer twinset with pink roses. Was that an echo of the floral stickers he’d used 10 years ago, in his brilliant show of spring 2012? Well yes, but no. “Flowers are symbolic of love and death. It was all these things: celebration or condolence.” That is life. One of the flower-embedded vinyl dresses had a cutout pair of medical-illustration hands wrapped around its middle as a belt, a woman creepily turned into a human plastic-covered bouquet.

There was a minute’s silence for the Queen at the beginning of Kane’s show. He marked his respect for her death. But the flip side of his ‘forensics’ this season—a reminder that we’re all human—is to enjoy our bodies while we’re in them. After all, Kane was the designer who first shook up fashion with his pulse-racing body-con debut collection. Now that body-con’s back and hot again, Kane’s ideally positioned for a whole new generation that’s going for it for the first time. The strange kinky-chic of his inhibition-free world is completely cut out for them.