Luella Bartley recently presented her Spring 2010 Ready to Wear Collection at London Fashion Week. Her new collection goes dressier and less cheeky than we’ve come to expect from Bartley. It would be easy to imagine the late Jackie Kennedy wearing these pieces in 1965. Silhouettes were very feminine, with princess seams, pinched waists, and padded hips. She also showed several summer weight car coats in very ladylike “trapeze” shapes in happy, gorgeous colors like a not-too-baby blue, and a wonderful lipstick-y red.

Other pieces included puffy dresses with velvet polka dots, sweetheart necklines, and Peter Pan collars. Bartley’s recent collections have been far more “precious” with an abundance of frilly touches like dainty flower prints, ribbons, and tulle. By comparison, the latest collection is much more dressed up, despite the sugar pinks and lemon yellows. Even the one or two dresses with tulle trim appeared more sophisticated than one might expect from a designer who does things unapologetically girly.

Louise Goldin’s Spring 2010 Ready to Wear Collection looked rather like the set of a science fiction movie. Though it was a knitwear collection, it included short, flaring skirts, leather insets, and pointy cone bustiers. The collection has been compared to the late Gianni Versace’s mid 1990s looks with a dash of Jean Paul Gaultier’s collection for Madonna’s 1990 world tour. The collection featured pastel green, yellow, violet, blue, and lavender, done in baby doll shapes complete with leather bloomers. Her fabrics are self-made, right down to the lacy edging on dresses and the tulle included as inserts in some of the pieces.

Goldin is also the designer of a new capsule collection for Scottish cashmere purveyor Ballantyne, with a 40 piece collection including skirts and tops. Goldin won the Swarovski Emerging Talent Award in 2008 and has achieved fame for her knitwear, making her a perfect choice to join forces with Ballantyne.

Image credit: wwd.com

In only her second collection to be shown at London?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s Fashion Week, young visionary Louise Goldin showed just how far one could go with the color black, knitwear, and leather. Known for knits that are a far cry from the sweaters your grandma used to knit you for Christmas, Goldin presented a futuristic collection all in black last week.

Goldin proved once again the level of technical accomplishment that made her earlier collections famous. Knits, leathers, and clear space were used in this meticulously crafted, futuristic collection inspired by abstract expressionist painter Vasily Kandinsky.

Describing her style as ?¢‚Ǩ?ìinnovative, futuristic, and luxurious,?¢‚Ǩ¬ù Goldin manages to create knits in intricate patterns that at once look like something from the future and something that could come from a vintage Missoni collection. This wasn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t terribly easy to tell because of Goldin?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s decision to make this collection all in black, but form-fitting, avant garde pieces fusing leather and knits further cemented Goldin?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s reputation as a young fashion visionary to watch.

After launching her fashion label ten years ago, London-based Luella Bartley presented collections in New York City from 2001-2007. But with the opening of her first stand-alone store in London in 2007, Bartley returned home and now presents her collections in London.

Bartley, whose clientele includes Lily Allen and Kelly Osbourne, also designs handbags and shoes, and in 2006 did a collaboration for American store Target. Her design ethos has been compared to that of Marc Jacobs, the American designer known for making his own rules.

The Fall 2009 Luella collection features dresses that combine English Schoolgirl with London Punk Rocker to arrive at an edgy cuteness that never plays it safe.

As you can see in the photo below, Luella Bartley puts together the girlishness of flowers, sparkly tights and a chartreuse jumper with an alchemy that turns a wild collection of ?¢‚Ǩ?ìbase metal?¢‚Ǩ¬ù pieces into pure gold.

British fashion designer Giles Deacon still considers himself a country boy from Cumbria. His designs reflect an upbringing of fly fishing and tramping through forests. In his Fall 2009 Ready-to-Wear collection last week in London, Deacon embraced that upbringing through colors, prints, feathers, and other materials. He confesses to Style.com?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s Sarah Mower that while there may be a method to the madness, it isn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t necessarily a straightforward method. ?¢‚Ǩ?ìWe just add and add and go mad, and we got on a real roll this time,?¢‚Ǩ¬ù he says.

When asked about his inspiration for this collection, he told Mower, ?¢‚Ǩ?ìI just thought I wanted to go back to what got me into fashion in the first place.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù To say that Deacon?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s Fall collection has a theme is interpreting the word lightly. His collections don?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t tell a story with a beginning, middle and end. His works are complex and worked by hand, like this fetching grey column with feathery gauntlets worn by 80s super model Rachel Williams. Each piece in Giles Deacon?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s Fall 2009 collection is best appreciated when seen as the unique work of art that it is.

British heritage brand Aquascutum is the quintessentially British brand known for rainwear and outerwear. It sounds boring, but designer Michael Herz?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s Fall 2009 Ready-to-Wear collection certainly wasn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t. The looks were classic and accessible to women of all generations, and showed that ?¢‚Ǩ?ìclassic?¢‚Ǩ¬ù doesn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t have to mean ?¢‚Ǩ?ìdated.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù In fact, the adorable Dev Patel, young star of the award winning movie Slumdog Millionaire, was dressed in an Aquascutum dinner suit recently for the 2009 British Academy Film Awards.

This collection contained double-layered taffeta coats, elaborately embroidered tunics, and edgy new designs in rain gear paired up with feminine, old guard floral blouses. The overcoat seen below looks like it might be the very devil to keep clean, but oh! How gorgeous it is! Model Aminata Niaria works this look like a young Beverly Johnson, with confidence and knowledge that standing out doesn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t have to mean making a spectacle of oneself.

Jonny Johansson, of Swedish fashion smash Acne, showed his Fall 2009 Ready-to-Wear collection in London last week, his first-ever show outside Stockholm.?Ǭ† Acne stands for ?¢‚Ǩ?ìAmbition to Create Novel Expressions,?¢‚Ǩ¬ù and the line features denim and separates, but these are definitely not your typical jeans and t-shirts. Inspired, as so many artists have been, while sitting in a Parisian caf?ɬ©, Johansson built a collection that included meticulously tailored jackets, as seen in the picture here, plus chunky diamond pins in odd shapes, black plastic jeans, and high-waisted pantsuits.

Acne is favored by the cool and connected for its independent vibe, its way of doing its own thing, its expression of the vision of an intelligent and talented designer who happens to come from reindeer country. Johanssen?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s trends for Fall 2009 are evident in this combination of embellished jacket, subdued trousers, and hands bedecked with big, chunky rings.