Fashion week Big and bold tributes to trailblazing female artists

On the 16th floor of a Brutalist office block, the actor Joely Richardson chatted in the front row at the Roksanda London fashion week show, her salmon pink two-piece accessorised with kingfisher tights and dramatic hand gestures.

- Jess Cartner-Morley

The poetic extravagance of the clothes she was there to see - glowing clouds of sunflower organza, lavishly draped tangerine silks was matched by the skyline, which peacocked its beauty through the glass walls.

The colours were strong, the vibe modern and abstract, the furry shoes deliberately challenging.

A few hours later Emilia Wickstead, a great favourite of the Princess of Wales, welcomed guests to the Royal Geographical Society with liveried waiters bearing piles of peeled tangerines on silver trays.

Oil paintings of admirals and a bust of the Victorian explorer Lady Jane Franklin loomed over the wooden galleries, a catwalk for the day for the demure-with-a twist clothes Wickstead is famed for: a sugar-pink ballerina-length strapless cocktail dress, courtly tailoring in baby blue.