Spirited performance    (Events- Fashion)

London Fashion Week celebrates its 25th anniversary this year and RedKarpet joined the festivities at Whisky Mist and the Met Bar  (among others) this week. Sat Bal (24 Feb'09)

February '09 Fashion Week has provided welcome escapism in the face of the current gloom. However, this is escapism backed by a strong undercurrent of success for the British creative industries.

Over at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angeles the Slumdog Millionaire stars and Kate Winslet firmly planted the flag for British film with huge success at the Oscars.

In London, Harold Tillman, chairman of the British Fashion Council, has the assurance that the ostensible Fashion Week frippery is tempered with hard economic credibility. After all, London Fashion Week generates more than £100 million each season in global business and the UK fashion industry is worth circa £40 billion. That businessmen of the calibre of Sir Philip Green (Arcadia Group) are firm fashion funders only reinforces the point.

(Above) The Broken Hearts  

That point wasn't lost on the Met Bar in Park Lane which certainly seized the carnival mood with its "99 Pink Balloons" party in honour of the designers showing at the Metropolitan hotel this week.

(Above) Perennial partygoer Philip Sallon with friends

The Met Bar and lobby lounge took on the rosy hues of a vintage circus complete with live circus performances, candy floss and fair fun. "Storm on the Catwalk" cocktails were sipped by some 300 fashion guests - fittingly since the cocktails were named as a salute to rising new designer William Tempest, who had been showing in the Metropolitan all week.

Waiting staff circulated tasty canapés and the circus theme extended to mini chorizo hot-dogs, tequila popcorn, toffee apples and pink candy floss. The live performances were also colourful, featuring a balloon-popping drag queen while vintage nautically-clad skipping girls enticed the more intrepid guests to a skipping session - no mean feat after all those cocktails.

Music came from the Broken Hearts who ensured that the Met more than played its part in the Fashion Week frolics.

Over at the exclusive Whisky Mist the mood was also buoyant at the Twenty8Twelve fashion week party hosted by Sienna Miller.

The party commemorated the debut of the Twenty8Twelve label on the Fashion Week runway, co-founded by sisters Sienna and Savannah Miller.

For Sienna it was the culmination of a hectic week which saw her return from a pre-Oscars party in LA just days earlier to make it in time for the London show preparations and party.

(Pic) Liela Moss leads The Duke Spirit at Whisky Mist

At the party Matthew Williamson mixed with The Killers and The Kooks while the Whisky Mist bar staff mixed the finest Bellinis and Mojitos along with Twenty8Twelve cocktails.

The tempo rose dramatically with a rousing live set by The Duke Spirit, fronted by the energetic Liela Moss who soon had the floor full of revellers.

London Fashion Week continues until 25 February'09

RK__________________________