Christopher Shannon to launch diffusion range

London Fashion Week Men's designer Christopher Shannon is to launch a diffusion collection titled North Quarter.

The designer, best-known for his technical prowess in outerwear and sportswear, will debut his 50 piece collection at boutique Flannels. The range will be characterised by more commercially-led pieces in comparison to Shannon's catwalk styling.

Shannon explained the inspiration to i-D Vice, stating the range is: "Inspired by my catwalk collection, North Quarter takes influences, design markers and key silhouettes from my mainline and repackages them for a detail-obsessed male customer brought up on a diet of premium technical sportswear brands. North Quarter gives me the opportunity to speak directly with the brand led British males who have inspired me creatively since the outset of my career."

Brands are streamlining their businesses

Oddly, at a time when major designers such a Marc Jacobs are fusing both mainline and diffusion ranges into one collection and streamlining their businesses (Jacobs has since folded his Marc by Marc Jacobs brand into his mainline) Shannon is keen to separate catwalk from commercial, and design-led from designed to wear.

Shannon further explained: "Sometimes it's frustrating with mainline as I want to do cleaner technical product, but our mainline is a boutique fashion product so it doesn't always sit well."

Customers are leaning towards authenticity and clarity

Ralph Lauren is another designer who is reducing his number of collections and cleaning up the many tentacles of different brands the company operates. The current mood in fashion is a mutual yearning whereby both designers and customers are looking for clarity, authenticity and less superfluous overkill from an over-saturated industry.

Consumers in 2016 are living in an age of fashion 'de trop,' and it is the industry's great misfortune designers are well-nigh expected to produce catwalk collections which ultimately never make it to the shop floor. The commercial formula being, when design is tricky, production becomes complex, and wholesale problematic. And certainly it isn't interesting to showcase on a runway.

Catwalks are art for art sake

Catwalks are more often than not endorsers as art for art's sake, selling a brand's image but not its clothes. While some designers, such as Alexander McQueen and John Galliano offered true visionary shows, fashion weeks, especially in London, have become diluted putting style ahead of substance, branding clothes that are often not fit to be worn, as directional. It's easy to become desensitised to the plethora of unwearable fashion deemed as mainlines.

Shannon's SS17 collection revisited the denim days of his Central Saint Martins graduation collection in 2008 and was one of the veritable highlights of London Collections Men in June. Let's hope the shredded, dissected and experimental versions don't get too significantly removed from the cleaner option.

Photo credit Christopher Shannon Instagram