London Collections Men day 1 review: Craig Green is best of British

Topman Design is the traditional opener of London Collections Men - the capital’s biannual menswear showcase, whose latest instalment for spring 2016 began this afternoon.

Maybe traditional is the wrong word, for an institution barely toddling out of infancy (this is it’s sixth season). It’s also the wrong word for Topman Design, which seldom conforms to the continuing cliche of British menswear - meaning suits and boots. Topman skews younger, while its “design” appellation implies tricksy levels of experimentation - over design, if you will. It sometimes catches in your maw, making you wish they’d get on with the job of simply making clothes that appeal to their audience of boys-to-men of roughly 16-25 (the brand’s target market).

For spring, the anonymous, amorphous Topman design team alighted on Northern Soul as an inspiration, allegedly. That was the rationale for a clash (sometimes, crash) of sports and suits - usually, pac-a-macs contrasting with two-pieces in slightly dodgy washed silk. It looked more off-duty Kevin Keegan than post-All Nighter Soulie.

Ignore the minute of the clothes, though, and Topman’s opening swipe was interesting for what it represented: namely, a kind of microcosm of London menswear right now. That sports-versus-suit story mirrors a new generation of designers whose output revolves around the urban streetwear of Dalston rather than the urbane suiting of Savile Row. Their number is legion, meaning that labels like Nasir Mazhar and Astrid Andersen - whose output can be unsatisfactorily summarised as luxury sportswear - are showing cheek-and-jowl with century-old gentlemen suiters.

Those are the two main stories of London menswear, to be played out across the next four days in shows and presentations from over eighty designers. Regardless, the highlights are few and far between. One was, inevitably, Craig Green - a designer whose talent, luckily, lives up to the Chernobylic mushroom-cloud of hot air blown around him. Just about. Green is still green behind the ears, but his clothes show a remarkable maturity. Which is to say that he slowly and methodically examines and develops ideas. And his are some of the best emerging in contemporary fashion. He’s a leader.

Some will scoff at stuff like Green’s sheets of cotton, attached to poles bound to the forearms of his models and obscuring them entirely, bar a hole punched in the torso. You kind of get why they would - but Green’s proposition this time was about wrapping the body in fabric, playing games of concealing and revealing both the shape of the body, and its actual flesh. That’s why you got titty twister “nipples” of fabric puckering fine-gauge knits, or sweaters scissored open at the chest to allow fabric to pass through.

You also got Green’s signature shapes, square-cut jackets and wide-leg trouser, like a judo suit Think his clothes are restricted to concept - or fashion types who wear it head-to-toe and wind up looking like a wayward karate kid? The latter, those trousers, have already begun sweeping foot-wide hems through a fair few collections. Believe the hype: right now, Green’s the very best of British.