“You know, when you do a mono-product line, you need to feel inspired by it,” says Aude Castéja, the French designer behind the young brand Monographie. Her line is “mono” in that every garment is a riff on the same concept: shirting.

Down a side street in leafy Notting Hill, the women’s clothing line Talitha, best known for the sort of silk caftans and tasseled blouses you might cover up with in Belize or Formenterra, has opened its first store.

When he wasn’t bartending his way through Central Saint Martins, Charles Jeffrey was hosting Loverboy, a monthly club night at London’s VFDalston. He now spends most of his time being a proper men’s wear designer, though “proper” hardly describes his anarchic aesthetic.

Neat pinafore dresses, belted vests and high-waisted coats, all in a rubberized, waterproof fabric: These are the pieces of a new collaboration between the Scottish heritage brand Mackintosh and the young British label Le Kilt, which launched on Friday during London Fashion Week.

On a recent afternoon on London’s Chancery Lane, Johnny Coca, the creative director of Mulberry, was browsing the underground marketplace of the London Silver Vaults — a warren of around 30 subterranean shops that has become one of his favorite places since he moved here six years ago. “I think it’s a very unexpected place,” he said, conspiratorially. “It’s kind of like a jewel display for me, because you can see all these antique silver products from the past.”

In a crowded corner of London’s Dover Street Market, the Chinese designer Renli Su is standing in front of her eponymous collection: one rail carrying embroidered dresses, jackets and skirts in a creamy, warm beige. “I heard they sell very quick this season,” she confides, quietly.

For the 26-year-old Nigerian designer Adebayo Oke-Lawal, whose brand Orange Culture held a presentation in a showroom at London Collections Men this weekend, fashion is a very personal business. “We’re trying to communicate the idea of a new generation of African men,” he told T of the intentions behind his gender-fluid men’s wear line.

The brand is inspired by the likes of Keira Knightley, Lily James and Daisy Ridley — “the English rose with a twist” — and to this end, Archer’s designs are luxurious and feminine, but she tempers the ladylike quality by including casual, everyday silhouettes.

Liushu “Shushu” Lei and Yutong “Tongtong” Jiang, the designers behind the new women’s wear brand Shushu/Tong, cite the Japanese singer Kyary Pamyu Pamyu as one of their greatest inspirations. For the uninitiated, she’s a star of the colorful J-pop scene — cartoonish, lurid, hyper-cute.

Faustine Steinmetz, a French designer who presented at London Fashion Week today, has never been interested in runway shows. “Fashion became a little bit too much about the front row, and who’s sitting there, and who’s modeling, and that kind of crap,” she told T earlier this week. “And I think a presentation really brings it back to ‘objets d’art.’”

In the airy reception room of a townhouse in London’s Chelsea, Arthur Yates has arranged a rack of vibrant unisex shirts next to a display of hand-painted milk urns. The two elements are unlikely halves of the same project: Bruta, his fashion and homeware brand that launched quietly last year. “There wasn’t some master plan,” he recalls. “I was just doing them in my bedroom with help from my girlfriend. And now it’s growing into something a little bit more serious, and people are taking interest.”

If it’s possible for fashion labels to be described as extroverted or introverted, 1205 is firmly the latter. Gerbase says she has “always wanted it to be about silence. I was really frustrated that so many people were making so much noise, and I always felt that it was quite empty noise.” A couple of seasons after launching 1205, she bumped into the critic Sarah Mower. “She asked me where my jacket was from,” recalls Gerbase. “I said I’d made it, and she said, ‘Who are you? I’ve never heard of you.’ And I said, ‘Oh, that’s exactly what I want.’”

2015, according to Paulo Almeida, has been “full of good things and crazy things.” In May, he and his design partner, Marta Marques, were awarded the LVMH Prize, giving them a year of mentoring and 300,000 euros for their now four-year-old London-based fashion brand, Marques’Almeida. Since then, life is looking very different.

Zandra Rhodes is dressed casually for our interview — but “casual is always with jewelry and makeup,” she says. “Always.” Her makeup consists of a thick circle of blue eye shadow paired with a dark red lipstick — the same every day, because she has no time for trial and error. She wears it all night, removes it each morning and applies a new layer in its place: “I only look at myself once a day,” she says.

In a presentation space at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, the designer Molly Goddard is turning a group of models in party dresses into a no-nonsense sandwich-production line.

It’s been five years since Simone Rocha first showed at London Fashion Week, when she was just a promising Central Saint Martins graduate with a familiar last name.

“The thing that I really love to put in my clothes is a feeling of being at ease – I don’t like the obstruction of too many details and hard shapes,” says the Belgian designer Jan-Jan Van Essche of his eponymous line of beautifully crafted, understated men’s wear – which includes everything from supersoft marled blazers to linen-blend drawstring trousers.