The best London Fashion Week yet?

Sian O’Flaherty from ShopStyle by PopSugar says Rihanna’s River Island collection, and some spectacular catwalk shows brought some much-needed buzz back to London.

As a memorable London Fashion Week draws to a close and moves on to fashion cities new, we look at the highlights – what caused the fashion pack to gasp or shriek, and what are the trends we should be searching for now.

Rihanna’s collection for River Island generated a huge amount of press attention all over the world – but her first foray fashion wasn’t just style and hype over substance. Rihanna cleverly translated her schizophrenic street/luxe style into a highly wearable collection of young and fresh florals and surprisingly feminine street wear. It’s in store from March 5^th.

The Burberry show, as we’ve come to expect, was a spectacle for the eyes and a treat for the ears, with live bands playing and a soundtrack again released from the show. We loved the playful use of hearts on shirts and skirts, and the naughty but classy PVC trench coats. Burberry again proved its dedication to bringing catwalk shows to the public through live streams of the shows on Twitter. In fact in total, 21 of this season’s catwalk shows were broadcast live online this season, thanks to a partnership between London Fashion Week, YouTube and Rightster. We also noticed the fashion crowd using Vine, a new app from Twitter which lets you scroll through short videos.

TopShop went as far as to place cameras inside the models’ handbags so viewers had a ‘model’s eye view’ – viewers could pretend to be the model and star of London Fashion Week, Cara Delevingne, at least for five minutes. The show was also live streamed on Twitter and YouTube. In terms of fashion, TopShop really pushed the boundaries of ‘high street’ with a really high fashion feel which demonstrated why it’s a brand loved by the fashion pack the world over.  The TopShop Unique show brought us beautifully tailored oversized coats, metallic leathers, and playful 90’s styles.

The general trends we picked out for the coming seasons are deep purples, dusky pinks, and flat shoes. Yes, the fash pack have ditched the vertiginous heels after several seasons and are wearing either trainers or flatter shoes now so get searching for some 60’s style low heeled shoes. Wearable, feminine and fun – three words to sum up the upcoming season.