FAUSTINE STEINMETZ AUTUMN/WINTER 2015-16 READY-TO-WEAR LONDON FASHION WEEK

“I DON’T want the label to be about the woman or the look,” said a petite and savvy Faustine Steinmetz this morning at her autumn/winter 2015 presentation as she promptly dismissed the idea of a show. “I admire people who use and work around the product,” she explained. And so her answer, then, is to do something that makes a point, a political statement even, as well as show off her product – swimsuits and jeans in a museum style set-up today with little circular vistas for the models to pose in. “As though the girls are the pictures,” she described – for Steinmetz has art and fashion pegged cleverly in the same bracket. A sustainable designer at heart, this was the first season she had bought fabric – thanks to Cotton USA as a sponsor, something she said she found incredibly liberating – thinking about how she could make it different from anyone else out there. She’ll be pleased to know she did. What’s nice about Steinmetz is she approaches fashion with a different mindset to everyone else. It’s refreshing, makes you think and makes you pay closer attention to the actual product – a surprisingly yet often missed thing.