London

Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5

Day 5
The fashion pack may have been propping their eyes open with matchsticks, but everyone came to life on Thursday evening for the most eagerly awaited show of the week, Vivienne Westwood. Maggie Davis reports on the show and Dan Jones profiles Peter Jensen, who closes London Fashion Week with a show on Friday.

Wild for Westwood
A star-studded front row that included David Walliams, Lily Allen, Skin and Jodie and Jemma Kidd watched as Dame Vivienne Westwood made her first appearance on the catwalk in a decade. Her Red Label is the more affordable diffusion line but it still looked beautifully tailored and ultra-polished, as a herd of the most beautiful models in London – including Lily Donaldson, Alice Gibb and Amanda Lopes – marched around the huge catwalk in an old sorting office in New Oxford Street.

Westwood, currently sporting copper-coloured hair, sought inspiration from the King's Road of her 1970s heyday when she ran fashion boutique SEX. The collection included signature pinstripes, tartans and draped dresses all with that quintessential anarchic Westwood edge. Afterwards we snuck backstage to find her hanging out with close friends, including hat designer Philip Treacy and her dear old mother Dora Swire, while scoffing Walkers crisps. Rock and roll! Feature continues

Two other great collections...
Ashish
Ashish Gupta showed a charming collection of short sequin-scattered dresses that combined his love of delicate craftsmanship with a flirty spirit that works so well in London. Gupta managed to cleverly work in two of the season's biggest trends, tartan and patchwork, into his quirkily chic aesthetic.

A classic Brit look at Margaret Howell's show

Margaret Howell
Howell as usual showed in her Wigmore Street store, a huge white space lit by a glass atrium, giving a fresh and rather chic feel to the proceedings – like being in an art gallery. The antithesis of the brash-but-fun collections shown in east London the day before, Howell offered up her usual classic Brit look with ankle-length high-waisted skirts in thick grey Chambray, perfectly cut shirting (some with a cute red and black microcheck) and a few pairs of deliciously dark burgundy riding boots.

Out with the old!
Go through your wardrobe, throw out all those things you never wear and drop them off at your local TK Maxx store. The store's GiveGet campaign, which launches on February 23, will sort through your badly chosen (yet high-quality) impulse buys and sell them on, with all proceeds going to Cancer Research UK. They raised over £2.5 million in 2006 and hope to raise even more this year. Check out www.tkmaxx.com for details.

Peter Jensen (© Paul Bliss)

Designer profile: Peter Jensen
London’s adopted Danish designer, Peter Jensen, has a fan in cult film director John Waters. In fact, a few pieces of Jensen’s Spring/Summer ’08 collection are held in the John Waters archive at Wesleyan University. The admiration’s mutual you see: Waters was the inspiration behind the collection, a whimsical edit of clear-cut wearable pieces with clever graphic references that is typical of Jensen’s signature style.

Debuting his first menswear collection in 1999 after graduating from Saint Martin’s, Jensen added a womenswear line in 2000 and has become a firm favourite on the London scene. Look out for Jensen’s collaborations with Fred Perry, Topshop, Topman and b Store, and his recent menswear show at Copenhagen Fashion Week (www.copenhagenfashionweek.com).

Do you have a favourite piece in your current collection?
‘No, not really, I like it all.’

Why have you chosen to show in Copenhagen as well as London Fashion Week?
‘The simple reason is that we would like to do a pure menswear show and the timing for that was really good. I also think that Denmark is a growing market for us; Danish people have got money and taste.’

What do you love about LFW?
‘I always buy myself a new Chanel perfume after fashion week. This time it will be Carnation that you can only get from the Chanel shop.’

What do you loathe?
‘The word “darling”: it sounds so silly.’

Do you have a favourite designer at LFW?
‘I very much like Louise Grey. She is very lovely and she used to work with me.’

You use animal characters in your work – what is the most fashionable animal?
‘I think that Lucy Ewing’s cat has to be the most fashionable animal.’

Where is your favourite, secret place in London?
‘That would be telling.’