London Fashion Week | ’90s, the New ’80s?

Show after show this week in London, the Y.B.D.’s were designing like it was 1995. Topshop’s Unique collection, in the hands of the stylist Katie Grand,

mined the junkyard-rave aesthetic of the cult classic “Tank Girl” to mixed results. Charles Anastase’s “autobiographical” collection paid homage to the unsung icons of grunge — think the D.I.Y. style of Kelley and Kim Deal, of the alt-rock band the Breeders, and Rayanne Graff, the too-cool-for-school character played by A.J. Langer on the teen drama “My So-Called Life.” Chances are that only the hipsters who crash his shows will be savvy enough to appreciate this.

Louise Gray, who for the past three seasons was a darling of London’s young designer launch pad, Fashion East, presented her first solo collection at the Soho House, but the show was the opposite of stodgy. Inspired by “body painting” — a favorite pastime of ravers, besides sucking on pacifiers — Gray’s use of devoré leggings and high heels (she collaborated with the shoe designer Nicholas Kirkwood) was actually quite chic. Her two-piece denim overalls, adorned with shards of metal on the chest, had a surprisingly industrial edge to them.

Sadly, many of the other ’90s-inspired collections failed to offer anything new, sticking to a formula of sprayed-on dresses and chunky knits. Still, a number of fall collections in London were noteworthy for offering an idea of how British fashion might in fact move forward. Christopher Kane paired slouchy sweatshirts with paper-thin dresses anchored by thick black stripes, suggesting fragile tomboys. Richard Nicoll showed tailored lab coats with undone lingerie elements in shades of Storm Trooper white, cream and pale pink — as if George Lucas had art-directed Madonna’s Blonde Ambition tour. Nicoll wasn’t the only designer blinded by science. Both the palette and the prints at Marios Schawb were based on the red-cyan spectrum of an anaglyph image. It was hilarious watching the audience use the show’s invite, a pair of 3-D glasses, to look for hidden meaning in the Technicolor prints.

In a green-lit, smoke-filled outdoor space, London’s only remaining provocateur, Giles Deacon, showed a collection that gave you goose bumps. The International Herald Tribune fashion critic Suzy Menkes complained of the loud noise, which was in fact a musical performance by the band An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump D-Bird C-Bird X-Bird (phew). But I think the ear-splitting sound was the point. Deacon combined the urgency of a punk concert with the craftsmanship of a Chanel show. Afterward, he said he had wanted to update some of the looks he had done throughout his career — his use of wool with fur, for example. But it all felt very new. And at the very least, he’s got his head in this decade.