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.