UK icon Zandra Rhodes kicks off London Fashion Week

The collection included plant motifs slapped on trousers and dresses, and translucent pink visors.

HOT ON THE heels of New York, London Fashion Week opened Friday with veteran designer Zandra Rhodes setting the standard for the cohort of young designers hoping to make their mark.
The 74-year-old presented her Spring/Summer 2016 collection inside the gilded room at the Cafe Royal hotel, showcasing hand-painted designs in vivid pinks, blues and orange.
The collection included plant motifs slapped on trousers and dresses, and translucent pink visors.
The designer took inspiration from the 'batik' fabrics of the Far East.
"I just want to show people how beautiful hand-painted things are," pink-haired Rhodes said.
Leaving behind the institutional luxury of its former Somerset House setting, this year's Fashion Week - London's 62nd - is based in the urban jungle of London's famous Soho entertainment district at Brewer Street Car Park, in the capital's historic red light district.
Seoul-born Jackie JS Lee was the first to unveil her collection at the new venue, showcasing her asymmetric designs accentuated by stripes running in all directions.
Her unconventional designs played with geometry, revealing one shoulder or leg at a time, and used colour sparingly.
Over five days, in the midst of bustling restaurants and sushi bars, the Art Deco multi-storey car park, built in the 1920s, will welcome more than 150 designers, with dozens of other shows and presentations taking place across the city.
British fashion heavyweights Vivienne Westwood Red Label and Burberry Prorsum will present today and Monday respectively.
Fashion Week will also give prominence to new technologies, with live-streaming of many of the shows and a new partnership between the fashion label Hunter and video service Periscope.
Riding the social media trend, Burberry said it would hold a "first-ever Snapchat Show" for the platform's 100 million users ahead of the official catwalk on Monday.
There will also be an exhibition dedicated to Minnie Mouse and her influence on fashion and pop culture, with photos taken by model Georgia May Jagger, the daughter of Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall.