British fashion: The future's bright. The future's from Yorkshire

Matty Bovan at the Leeds room installation he has curated for an exhibition at Somerset House.

There's a new Yorkshire designer at the forefront of British fashion. Stephanie Smith and Abigail Turner report from the catwalks.

When Vivienne Westwood and her husband, Andreas Kronthaler, took their seats on the front row of Matty Bovan’s London Fashion Week show, they as good as crowned the young Yorkshire designer the heir apparent of all that is eccentrically brilliant about British fashion, style and design.

Bovan’s second LFW show, presenting his collection for spring/summer 2019, mixed the suburban Yorkshire garden with the world of fantasy, combining an array of fabrics and innovative methods of embroidery to bring a twisted English woodland to the British Fashion Council venue.

The inspiration came from his hero, Derek Jarman. On finding an old VHS of The Last of England in a charity shop, Bovan revisited the artist and filmmaker’s work, and was particularly taken by the quote “I’ve never believed in reality”. Bovan took us into a futuristic sphere, along the way collecting the remnants of the natural world. Towering headdresses made out of what looked like garden paraphernalia were adorned with flowers and greenery; a pink and yellow puffed-up crinoline dress was intricately embroidered with a patchwork of multicoloured flowers.

Huge bumbags are part of Bovan's collaboration with Coach, seen here at the London Fashion Week SS19 catwalk show.

Bovan, 28, still lives in his home city of York, returning there after he graduated from Central Saint Martins in 2015. He has featured three times at LFW with the Fashion East collective, and won the LVMH Graduate Prize 2015. London Fashion Week SS19 brings his handbag collaboration with Coach. Huge bumbags featured alongside teeny-tiny ones, with Bovan reasoning that everything one needs is on one’s phone anyway.

Bovan has also curated an installation inspired by Yorkshire landmarks for the London Design Biennale 2018, after Leeds was chosen as one of only three UK cities to  take part in the event. Shown at Somerset House on The Strand, Bovan curated the Leeds room, sponsored by Leeds 2023 and Leeds Beckett University (where Bovan lectures), bringing artists Rory Mullen and Adam Leach on board to elucidate the Biennale’s theme of Emotional States.

Entitled Just, Unjust, the work was inspired by an Elizabethan wood carving depicting the Dance of Death, which sits in The Red Drawing Room at Burton Agnes Hall in Yorkshire. Featuring bespoke garments designed especially by Bovan  for the project, Leeds Beckett PhD student and artist Zara Worth also took part.

In other catwalk news, Riccardo Tisci showed his debut collection for Burberry, which manufactures in Castleford. Named Kingdom, he said: “It’s like a patchwork or a mix of the British lifestyle.” Sectioned under headings Refined, Relaxed, and Evening, it was streamed live on Instagram, continuing Christopher Bailey’s legacy of technology firsts. Not as wild as many anticipated, it set out Tisci’s personal vision of the touchstones of British culture, from tradition and establishment to punk.