Burberry, JW Anderson, Erdem, and More: The Best Looks from London Fashion Week Fall 2020

Triangular prints, strong silhouettes, gel harnesses, and micro minis wouldn't have one assuming that Christopher Kane was inspired by something as romantic as The Garden of Eden. But it was the dark side of Adam and Eve that the designer drew upon, and the passion and perversion that lead the couple to risk it all for one bite of forbidden fruit. That love triangle (hence the prints) between man, woman, and nature was what Kane riffed on as he crafted his Fall 2020 range. The shape has symbolized the "eye of the Supreme Being watching over the universe," said Kane's show notes, and the motif carried through graphic prints, lace cut-outs, and super-femme bows that were equal parts strong and sexy.

Jonathan Anderson has a fantastic knack for taking the things we love most in our closets, putting his special sauce on them, and then reintroducing them to us in a way that's so new, we're likely to buy them again—in multiples. His Fall 2020 collection was case in point. Take the classic trench, and add some JW magic—like the one pictured here; it's got all the classic codes, yet it's revisited into a sort of superwoman's cape. The result? Fresh and undeniably wearable. Anderson's coats and a sort of glistening angel-hair-like adornment to coats and dresses stole the show, specifically a series of oversized trapeze coats with exaggerated lapels, Victorian puff-sleeved tuxedo dresses, and boleros made with the glistening strands that updated everything from the shoulders of a checked coat to a simple knit on the finale look, worn by Kaia Gerber.

Erdem welcomed London Fashion Week goers back to the National Portrait Gallery for his Fall 2020 collection, a gallery which will soon be home to Bright Young Things, a collection of Cecil Beaton's portraits from the '20s and '30s. The duo, Moralioglu and Beaton, made for a great pairing, as the designer used the photographer's work as a starting point for his latest riffs on romance. The start of the new decade seemed an appropriate time to revisit the glamour of a century ago. While much has evolved, it seems little has changed. Society is still optimistically seeking refuge from the political climate via all things luxury, romance, decadence, and party dressing—but much more seems at stake now, and decadence for its own sake is no longer chic. Erdem, an arbiter of merging the glamour of the past with the pulse of our present, brought that mood to the forefront with a more forward-thinking approach to his brand codes: wearable '30s-style satin silhouettes with over-the-top embroidery, gilded laces, feather headdresses paired with outerwear, and feminine-yet-powerful lamé dresses with puff sleeves.