In the week that top designer Julien Macdonald described his latest collection as "modern meets Japan", Soho's Reading Room was turned into an pop-up one-stop fashion shop for Regenerate Japan.
Within the Japanese garden installation designed by lanky film director Ben Charles Edwards, a tea ceremony was conducted by the folk at JING Tea. One lady was overheard asking the servers, "do you do coffee?" (yes, really).
The private view in the cosy venue hosted around a dozen designers. We admired the works of a colourful trio from Norway. Chic chick and Sca Ulven head designer Sara C. Andersson filled us in on the thinking behind her very wearable third collection The Study while the boyish-looking Armando Santos, who brought along his mother to help promote his latest haute couture collection, is a down-to-earth guy straight outta Bergen who started by recycling jeans and now designs dresses with Dakota Fanning in mind, fit for the red carpet.
Camilla Bruerberg is also on her third collection. Inspired by her country's forests and fairytale creatures, she dressed Röyksopp for their latest tour. She's looking forward to the day that Johnny Depp models her playful clothes but says that, if she wasn't designing, she would be just as happy digging up dinosaurs. We reckon that paleontology's loss is fashion's gain.
Regenerate Japan combined art with fashion to raise money the Red Cross Japan Tsunami Appeal.
All photos (c) Suke Driver unless otherwise marked.