http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/19/fashion/a-weekend-whirlwind-simone-rochas-nostalgia-and-henry-hollands-cheeky-tees.html 2016-09-18 17:43:18 A Weekend Whirlwind: Simone Rocha’s Nostalgia and Henry Holland’s Cheeky Tees Gareth Pugh debuted both opera costumes and a spring collection, while models like Gigi Hadid and Winnie Harlow filled the front rows. === LONDON — Fashion may be an industry based on change, but in the wake of It was a shame, as there was plenty to see. Here are a few of the highlights: The West End may be home to the city’s armada of luxury flagship stores, but these days the majority of local designers live and work in East London, with studios housed in renovated historical buildings and warehouses on its leafy squares and winding streets. It seemed fitting that the Topshop Unique catwalk space, which many of the city’s emerging talents also use as a show venue, moved to the heart of Old Spitalfields Market. The space has been used as a market site for more than 350 years, although the young vendors around the runway hailed from everywhere but the past. The combination of experimental designers, start-up businesses and hordes of curious shoppers was a welcome reminder of London’s position as the most progressive city of the fashion week Big Four. London has never suffered from a shortage of talented young designers, and the first days of fashion week here always offer an opportunity to find the next generation changing the city’s style scene. From The standouts included Mr. Bovan, 26, a Central Saint Martins graduate who has assisted in Louis Vuitton’s Paris atelier, developed prints for Marc Jacobs and made mannequins for Miuccia Prada at Miu Miu, and who showed off more of his New Romantic candy-colored creations to whoops of delight at the Fashion East show. And Ms. Steinmetz, who offered a compelling study of denim as a medium, using the familiar blue cloth to create everything from diaphanous, filmy work wear jackets to isolated jean pockets as accessories, sported by reclining models covered in blue paint and crystals. Four hundred years after the death of William Shakespeare, leading lights from the London fashion world gave 21st-century master classes in using the catwalk as theater. On Saturday night, the Dublin-born designer Simone Rocha took over Southwark Cathedral, sending out a dreamy procession inspired by a nostalgia-tinged vision of Ireland — think farm girls, first communions and deconstructed Victoriana — under the shadows of the church’s soaring ceiling. Then came Gareth Pugh, who 24 hours earlier had seen his 60 costumes for the opera And on Sunday morning, the handbag doyenne Anya Hindmarch took us ‘round and ‘round for her latest collection, called Circulus, building a space age-like Colosseum in which models paraded above a gravitating, color-changing flying saucer. The trend for the theatrical in this city isn’t going anywhere any time soon. He may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But a decade after he first arrived on the London fashion scene, Henry Holland went back on Saturday afternoon to where it all began: those cheeky fashion groupie slogan T-shirts, reworked for the next generation. Fancy sporting “I’m Yours for a Tenner Kendall Jenner,” “Let’s Get Obscene Cara Delevingne” or “Let’s Breed Bella Hadid” on your chest? Then Mr. Holland is the designer for you. And for the old guard, a few of the original “Get Yer Freak on Giles Deacon” and “Do Me Daily Christopher Bailey” had members of the crowd giggling into their show notes. At certain points last weekend it felt as if there were as many models on the front rows as there were on the catwalk. The Seventies supermodel And at Versus, the final show of Saturday night and the first without Anthony Vaccarello, its creative director who