Per Götesson A/W 2019 London Fashion Week Men's

Mood board: ‘I’m a trouser guy,’ designer Per Götesson said backstage after his sexy autumn/winter 2019 show. Originally hailing from Småland in Sweden, Götesson moved to London to study at the RCA graduating in 2016. He debuted a collection as part of the line up at Fashion East’s MAN initiative for SS17, having worked as a design assistant to Ann-Sofie Back at Cheap Monday. It was there that his focus on denim and his interests in subverting everyday clothes began. For his latest collection, the designer considered what it means to come from a small place and move to a city. This led him to look at the dream of travel and the magic of ships in a bottle. It translated into a masculinity unbridled and unfurled in twisted jersey T-shirts and inside out denim jackets with their sleeves cut away.

Team work: Within the walls of the UK’s finest art schools, the cross pollination of ideas, the arguments, the sharing and the stealing fuelled a fiercely competitive and collaborative attitude. And London’s menswear designers are a social bunch. The designers behind Art School presented a defiant collection of pieces they said were for their friends, many of whom walked the show. Charles Jeffrey’s LOVERBOY was enveloped in a curated, cultured world filled with artists and aesthetes. A host of the city’s BYTs sat in the audience to watch Fashion East. Whilst the world seems obsessed with borders, London is just moving on and learning. For his latest collection, Götesson learnt from experts in developing fields to understand what more can be done with draping and the male body. Digitally rendered jackets were made in collaboration with Kathy McGee, founder of DIGITOILLE, who studied alongside Götesson at RCA. Draped denim trousers appeared as if unzipped over a second pair; wide-leg pants were held by a single suspender. Repurposed jeans churned up the legs.

Sound bite: Artist Tony Hornecker created a giant wooden cot, which was placed in the centre of the catwalk. Inside it were old toys, a mini TV, champagne bottles, magazines and a tapestry of a fox. Old candle stick holders and whisky bottles spilled out of its sides, chiming with Götesson’s curiosity in the fragility of craftsmanship and the pathos of found objects. Jeweller Husam el-Odeh created pieces using broken glass inspired by the remnants of the Vasa ship that capsized and sank in Stockholm in 1628. ‘That travel narrative is always there,’ he said. ‘We looked at the things that the men on the ship carried with them, like thimbles and small bottles. I wanted to look at the complexity of accumulating things over time and adding a more perverse attention to detail to things that are really broken and really fragile.’