Stella Mccartney Presentation At LFW

From The Guardian

Stella McCartney magical turn will be this season's hard-to-beat show

London fashion week saw designer celebrate UK return with an outwardly formal event giving way to interactive performance art

Stella McCartney London fashion week

With Milan and Paris fashion weeks not yet begun, it is perhaps a little early in the catwalk season to be handing out honours. But the fashion spectacular presented by Stella McCartney at London Fashion Week on Saturday night will be hard to beat as the event of the season.

What was billed as a formal event – a sit-down, black-tie dinner – turned into a piece of interactive performance art. The evening began in elegant style, with no hint of what was to come.

In a marble Mayfair hall lit with Parisian-style globe lamps and Ronnie Scott's orchestra playing jazz standards, models dressed in marble-printed silk eveningwear took their places among the guests, so that each table hosted one outfit from McCartney's new collection.

Rihanna, Kate Moss, Kanye West and about 100 fashion journalists and stylists were served a six-course vegetarian dinner featuring Hyde Park sweet chestnut, Sicilian blood oranges, saffron risotto, black Perigord truffle and Wigmore cheese on toast.

The jazz musicians then made way for sleight of hand as the Dutch magician Hans Klok, aided by Alexa Chung, took centre stage.

Chung, who was last week appointed an ambassador for young fashion by the British Fashion Council, was hypnotised and then appeared to levitate on the point of three swords. McCartney then joined Klok on stage for a card trick.

But as the audience applauded what seemed to have been the evening's high point, an even more elevated entertainment began.

The models who had been seeded among the guests leapt from their chairs on to the centre of the round tables, and performed a ballet to a Led Zeppelin soundtrack.

The Spanish choreographer Blanca Li had rehearsed models including Yasmin Le Bon and Amber Valetta, as well as professional dancers masquerading as mannequins.

Dressed in swirling silks, cobalt blue lace gowns and cutaway tuxedo evening suits, the dancers traversed the length of the room stepping from chair to chair.

"I wanted to do something special to celebrate being back in London," McCartney said. "I love magic, and that was pretty magic."

From The Telegraph

Who knew model Kinga Rajzak was such a fan of Kirkegaard (she's just got a first in philosophy in London) or that Tati Cotliar was such a tango freak?

All was revealed at Stella McCartney's groundbreaking "dance-tation" last night, in a deconsecrated church in London's Mayfair.

The first wave of guests, invited for drinks and dinner (others were admitted in successive waves; fashion can be cruelly Upstairs, Downstairs sometimes) milled around in their cocktail frocks and black tie, sipping champagne, listening to Ronnie Scott's big band play 40s jazz numbers, chatting to the models, all of whom were wearing McCartney's new collection - and wondering when everything was going to kick off. All week McCartney's PRs had been playing their cards extremely close to their chest.

Then, just as the fourth vegetarian mini course was slipping down, a model seated at one of the tables yelled at a waiter, someone threw a chair, someone else leapt across the room in full attack mode and before the startled guests, who included Kate Moss, Rihanna, Peter Blake, Zaha Hadid, Paul Whitehouse, Richard E Grant and Minnie Driver, grasped quite what was going on, a flash-mob fashion show was taking place.

Forget dreary old conventional catwalk, this was surround-fashion: Yasmin Le Bon and Amber Valetta dancing on tables and chairs, Shalom Harlow throwing diva-like shapes, Kate Moss smoking in the loos (whoops, turns out that wasn't part of the official show) and around 16 other models taking part in a choreographed number that combined high energy with McCartney's voluminous marbled dresses and those sexy black and white panelled columns that are rapidly becoming another of her trademarks.

And yes, in shocking news, those models can dance.

The wham-bam approach had clearly teased out McCartney 's dramatic side. Even the tuxedos had a theatrically maître d' severity, and the flamboyance suits her. Those slinky tangerine and cobalt lace gowns, with their stretchy flesh-coloured mesh inserts are heading straight for the red carpet and the marbling will look fabulous on Rihanna.

But given that McCartney's also showing in Paris in a fortnight, what were we looking at? Pre collection? A special "London Collection"? "No said a fresh looking McCartney, "It's main collection. And the one in Paris will be main collection too". So she's done two main collections this season? "That's right". Plus the four kids, and designing Team GB's Olympics kit? "Correct again. I must be mad," she grinned. "And we were up all night rehearsing this. It took such a looooong time. It was real teamwork - we were lucky enough to get Blanca Li (the choreographer responsible for Daft Punk's Around the World Video). The hardest thing was keeping it secret. The models weren't allowed to tell anyone. But we wanted to do something special for London". She succeeded. Please can all fashion shows be this entertaining?

You can see some of her designs here: