Daniel Fletcher takes centre stage at London Fashion Week

Made in China, but so very British, is how we'd describe Daniel Fletcher's debut collection as creative director for Mithridate, the Shanghai-based luxury label that he just made his debut at during London Fashion Week. "I'm a British designer, and the team at Mithridate loved that," Fletcher told Gentleman's Journal at this studio on the eve of his show, his team that has worked with him throughout his career getting things underway around him. "There's a massive appetite for that in China and the founder Tina loves London and British design, so she was happy to give me the reigns to set the direction for the brand."

Mithridate was founded in 2019 by Tina Jiang, and after her creative director Demon Zhang left in 2024, she looked to Britain to find his replacement. "London is such a centre of creativity, and British designers are also running some of the biggest houses in Paris, so it made sense,” Jiang told Vogue Business earlier this year, days after Fletcher's surprise appointment at the Chinese brand, which saw him enlist British darling Alexa Chung to front his announcement campaign.

The label has shown in London for the past eight seasons, but it has always looked a little different: high-shine gowns; celestial skirts and suits cut from wispy drapes. Fletcher, who founded his namesake brand in 2015, has held positions at JW Anderson, Louis Vuitton and Fiorucci, and holds a position as the artistic director of Ascot, has presented a collection steeped in the history of British ready-to-wear. "The brief was very open," Fletcher explains. "It's more heavily weighted towards womenswear as the brand always was, but there's a decent amount of menswear."

Fletcher's moodboard for his menswear was formed with a scattering of images of Mick Jagger in the 1960s, actor Rupert Everett wearing a baggy shirt and tie in 1984 gay romantic drama Another Country and Nicole Kidman wearing a pencil suit in 1999. "Bridget Jones, Four Weddings and a Funeral, and all those Richard Curtis films were on the initial board," he says.

In the collection, which expertly reflects British eccentricity, billowing trousers that fall on pointed brogues and are paired with untucked Oxford shirts, while jumpers dyed acidic green and cable knits are worn over shoulders in a public schoolboy, Harrow kind of way. Elsewhere scarves, which have become a signature in Fletcher's own brand collections, are tied neatly behind the neck so they fall elegantly on oversized double-breasted suits. Camel-dyed leathers are juxtaposed against corduroy blazers, which in turn are in contrast to the relaxed nature of the Harrington jackets. Sailor-like jackets are finished with blanket stitch edging. "I wanted to take the ideas of clothing we already know, whether that's a bomber jacket or a shirt or skirt, and turn it on its head," Fletcher shares. Collegiate-striped trousers riff on the public schoolboy idea further, while an overall colour palette of navy, cream and chocolate brown, but also clashes of sickly sweet Eighties and Noughties-inspired bad taste hues such as mustard, yellow, pink and green. "It's very British - it's in the same vein as Saltburn where you've got this mismatched eccentricity."

For Fletcher the new position allowed for a myriad of possibilities when it comes to his craft. "This is not a brand that has huge heritage," he explained, telling me that with the brand's financial backing he could do a lot more than he could with his own label (Mithridate, for context, has seven stores in China and is set to open more in the Western world). "But what it does have is great manufacturing possibilities, so for example we've used a traditional hand-embroidering on jackets, which is traditionally Chinese, and takes 14 hours to do."

Fletcher wants Mithridate to become an internationally-recognised brand. "I want to see people in New York and London wearing it." For that, brand identity is everything. A new logo is inspired by the Jermyn Street shop signs of the early 20th Century, as well as apothecary bottles. "The brand takes its name from a semi-mythical elixir created by the Roman emperor Mithridate and it was meant to solve all illnesses. We looked at old bottles of it from hundreds of years ago."

He also wants to dispel the common associations with the Made In China label. We often think of fast fashion, but through his role at Mithridate, Fletcher is keen to show honest craftsmanship.

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