Following her Milan debut last season, Martine Rose is back on home soil. The British designer returned to London for an intimate off-schedule show yesterday, taking over a former job centre in Marylebone on the hottest day of the year so far. In true Martine style, the show wasn’t just about her, but the bubbling underbelly of the capital’s creative scene. The first floor of the building housed a market dedicated to young vendors across fashion, art, photography, music and publishing, using the space as “an opportunity to celebrate all of the creative people in London and everyone who contributes to the cultural life,” Rose said backstage post-show. While guests milled around the first floor shopping for graphic tees and sipping on cocktails, upstairs was being transformed into a 70s style salon, swapping the grey carpeted traditional job centre for a satin-draped dream.

The first model hit the runway in an all black ensemble and a voluminous wig – a motif that proved to be a recurring look throughout the show: permed, coiffed or frizzed. Models weaved through the audience, pausing occasionally to show off a bag or to strike a pose. “We wanted the models to be playful,” Martine told us. “They’re all street cast,” she continued, “I really wanted them to enjoy posing, to have fun and for it to be charming, because people are charming, aren’t they?” The designer’s longtime musical collaborator, Sasa Crnobrnja, drummed up a roster of eclectic dance hits to set the tone, hopping from 1996 hit Hoovers and Spraycans by DJ Choci Roc to a remix of Fela Kuti and Roy Ayers’ seminal 1980 track 2000 Blacks Got to Be Free.

Rose described this season as “This sort of new shrunken silhouette. Everything feels a bit cinched, a bit too tight, slightly awkward, but somehow still sexy, I hope.” Sexy indeed. A subverted study of shapewear saw undergarments worn as daywear, with outerwear and shirts partly built from a stretch fabric to cling as close to the body as possible. Leather jackets were shrunken or cropped, tailoring was oversized, but secured tightly to the waist in a play on proportions, and thigh-skimming shorts were paired with knee-high socks. Football shirts were adorned with signature Martine logos, track suits were hybridised with hoods attached to baseball caps, and technical outerwear was contrasted by sexy leather pants or slinky skirts. On foot, the designer debuted a new iteration of her sell-out Nike Shox MR4 alongside kitten heels and mule-loafer hybrids, while echoing those around her, looks took inspiration from the high streets of London and “the people who keep them alive,” translating juice packaging or ads from vintage adult magazines into graphic motifs, and refashioning barbershop capes or cafe aprons into something new entirely.