Taking inspiration from Bruce Brown’s Motorcycle classic, Belstaff decided to bring the dirt track to London with a film-set homage to On Any Sunday, making it a weekend to remember. Heavily influenced by the “King of Cool”, Steve McQueen, the models lazed back on the vintage cars and motor cycles dressed in hand-waxed leather clad and aviator shades. The cast had a carefree attitude exuding off of their rugged exterior – you could almost smell the motor oil radiating off of them. Integral to this collection was the personalisation of the leather jackets and the references to the sun-bleached palette of the film. Recognisable personas from the track were replicated in this collection: Romero with a diamond hand-waxed leather application and Mashburn’s black and yellow colour schemes. These pieces celebrated the pioneering era of 1970s racers as Frederik Dyhr, Belstaff VP Men’s Design explains, “[It] was a defining time for Belstaff because leather manufacturers on both sides of the Atlantic were really embracing this idea of personalising leatherwear and so began an era of strong colour direction”.

 

Rough-edged, lived-in looks, rich tobacco tonals and black burnished finishes set the tone for most outfits. Paying tribute to racing as a coveted sport, we saw relaxed open necklines – an ode to the racing shirts of the 1970s. As a nice surprise Belstaff showed us five looks from the Women’s SS17 pre collection, again taking carefree biker-goddess attitudes as well as hand-waxed suede and lightweight straight-leg denim. The show carried on outside thrilling the public with Twelve-time Trial World Champion Dougie Lampkin MBE performing crazy bike stunts a stones throw away from Queen Liz’s 90^thbirthday luncheon. A rather noisy, but lovely birthday surprise, we think!

Words: Lizzie Griffin