Danish brand Soulland took it to church in their first ever London collection, but a combination of greenscreen backdrops and a downloadable app meant that the ecclesiastical space turned psychedelic when looked at through your phone. Designer Silas Adler was on relaxed form, happy to be showing off his creations to the LC:M-goers. “We wanted to do something on an international platform,” he told us. “Paris and London were the options, and London just seemed like a really good fit for us. We have connections here and we can really relate to the culture. There’s a very special link between British people and Danish people. I think that we really understand each other.”
The fact that some of the inspiration behind the collection was the 80s/90s “Madchester” of the Happy Mondays (and the city’s football culture) was coincidental. The British references weren’t meant as a PR stunt to please the brand’s adopted countrymen – Adler just happened to be drawn to them.
The collection was named Exotic Erotic for two reasons: “When you say exotic, some people think of a beach in the Bahamas, but to us from Denmark, the North of England was exotic to us. All that techno culture. And I also found this picture of Shaun Ryder in front of this porn store and it said in neon signs ‘Exotic’ and ‘Erotic'”.
Under that umbrella term, Adler admitted that the collection was a mixed bag (in the sense of it being a broad range of looks, rather than of fluctuating quality). There were football scarves, Ska-style check suits, tie-dye bleached denim, snakeskin brogues, prisoner pinstripe shirts and TV-static-look wool trousers. If anything, the inventive use of the app distracted from the clothes, but if you looked beyond the hallucinatory graphics, there were plenty of wearable and interesting pieces here.