London Fashion Week gets kinky: Office wear meets sex dungeon on this year’s runway

This season’s formalwear looks are like running into your work colleagues in a Berlin darkroom, writes Joseph Bobowicz

Edward Crutchley’s show during London Fashion Week February 2024: ‘London’s designers have doubled down on the kinky corp-core trend’ (Jeff Spicer/Getty)

If ever there was a subset of fashion that embodied tradition and stuffiness, it’s formalwear. You know, the type that keeps a CEO in a job or your average office drone ticking along. Of course, suiting, shirting, ties and all things “smart” are ripe for subversion. Like the underslept hedge-fund manager towards close of play, they too can snap and unravel at the slightest change. And so, under the pressure of surviving in a fashion industry as fraught as London’s, it’s no surprise that tailoring has got a little hot under the collar.

Indeed, the 40th anniversary of London Fashion Week feels more like a sigh of relief than a celebration. If it wasn’t for Burberry dragging press from the US and the continent to the big smoke, it could have been dire straits. Still, we’re here and, in true British fashion, ready to turn something serious into a big, sexy knees-up. Just as rules and professionalism go out the window at office drinks – giving Jenny and Mike from HR carte blanche to get freaky on top of the photocopier – the runways’ recent predilection for Savile Row cuts and muted elegance has gotten a whole lot steamier. Forget the tedium of quiet luxury: this season is drab done dirty.

Hot on the heels of New York, where the penchant for NSFW office garb first appeared – think Luar’s hulking double-breasted leathers, Tory Burch’s transparent flasher macs or Thom Browne’s literally bursting boardroom blazers – London’s designers have doubled down on the kinky corp-core trend. Edward Crutchley, the London darling known for his high-femme brocade silks and tongue-in-cheek smut, was a case in point, taking your run-of-the-mill jacquard overcoat and colouring it in a freaky animal print inspired by wild African dogs. On top, it was finished with a Stephen Jones-designed cowboy hat in the same animal pattern. Commuter with a thing for cowboys? Perhaps.

Elsewhere, Crutchley offered a simpler tailored overcoat, freaked with sloping, caricatured shoulders and styled by the ever-cheeky Julian Ganio, who chose to forget the shirt below. This London flasher in question gestured with a cigarette as she walked, oozing post-coital nonchalance. On first glance, it read as effortless French-girl cool; however, behind the look was a bespoke fibreglass structure. “I wanted to push the width of the shoulder as far as possible without adding stiffness or more structure to the garment,” explained Crutchley. “So rather than building into the coat, we built onto the body instead.” Sensual stuff!

Over at Sinéad O’Dwyer, her C-suite workforce arrived with a lacy, lingerie-heavy skew, referencing workplace dress codes explicitly before completely splicing them. As such, her signature lattice bodysuits were patchworked with cotton shirting across the breasts and teamed with dorky derbies care of Ecco, meanwhile halterneck dresses transposed the lexicon of dress shirts and ties into Japanese-bondage-inspired knots. Bodices came with strict pleats typical of a Charles Tyrwhitt non-iron, and actual, double-button collar shirts were darted across the front, tracing the pecs. Some even came with neckties or stretch-corseted knits incorporated into the very design.

“I love menswear, shirting and tailoring, and I was thinking about how at the moment things feel a little bit hostile in London. Like it is really difficult at the moment,” explained O’Dwyer backstage. “Somehow, that kind of day-to-day humdrum felt like an interesting reference – but then to break into this fantasy of what’s not corporate.” Box-pleat skirts in salmon or beige were turned over at the top, revealing buckled attachments that recalled loosened trouser braces or garters, and rollneck knits were cut for an at once covert but distinguished breast contour. Again, this duality of restriction and sexual liberation, not so much juxtaposed as seamlessly morphed alongside one another via Swarovski-encrusted stretchwear.

Sinéad O’Dwyer’s signature lattice bodysuits (Sinéad O’Dwyer)

Arguably the raunchiest outing of the day, Fashion East’s show was less a tarted-up take on JP Morganites and more an all-out office orgy. This multi-designer show kicked off with Johanna Parv, whose usual penchant for cycling-inspired gear took a chicer tack. Here, she subbed in upturned collars complete with invisible zips that came across the shoulders, splayed to louche effect. Such hyper-techy pieces were joined by office skirts underlaid with cycle shorts, or obscured-lapel blazers and micro-micro skirt combos. Sexy secretaries using the cycle-to-work scheme? Why not!

The show was then followed up by Olly Shinder’s fetish-fashion bonanza, replete with patent leather fisherman trousers, elasticated gauntlets and slickly tailored workwear. Here, the icing on the cake was the steely office-apt eyeglasses adorning each model, and the twisted, necktie shirting that darted along the front for a fragile, queer take on the tedium of modern corporate style. Imagine meeting your work colleagues in a Berlin darkroom. That was the vibe.

And so, it seems that neatly tailored, work-appropriate sleaze is London’s answer to kicking out. As the cost of living crisis eats away at designer budgets – or worse, enforces a return to conservative dressing – there remains an inherently London desire to twist it with a wink and a nod. The dress of the professional class has never been riveting, but it’s a uniform, and what’s sexier than that?