Sage launches London Fashion Week with fine ideas but a lack of finesse

Russell Sage, known for his use of antique fabrics, developed his style for his seventh show by fusing Gainsborough silks and a Japanese screen with directional silhouettes.

"It's about handwork, not craftwork," said Sage yesterday, referring to this year's fashion obsession with homespun hippy crafts.

That handwork was evident in a 1950s-style swimsuit of daffodil yellow Gainsborough silk with a pleated bodice, a blue Chinese silk taffeta lounge jacket with hand-pleated bias cuffs and hem, and in a black silk crêpe Bolero jacket inserted with antique magic box panels.

"There is no big concept. They are just beautiful clothes," he said backstage at his "Russell Sage is not Worth it" show on the first day of London Fashion Week.

Sage's work with Davies & Son, royal hat makers, also produced spectacular results: a vicuna tailored jacket and a jacket dress of wool woven with diamond dust. Even the headwear – felt skullcaps that were part wig and part cloche hat – were a collaboration between Sage, Lock & Co, and supremo hair stylist Eugene Souleiman.

"For me, it was all about researching the processes of making these clothes," Sage said. "There is so much work gone into them that they can't be ripped off by the high street. The buttons are handmade, the linings are all stitched in by hand, there is lots of ribbon work, and original Charles Frederick Worth [the first couturier] labels are inside in honour of when times were better."

But for all Sage's ideas, the clothes lacked the perfection of finish needed when using couture techniques and vintage fabric, and the show lacked any energy – sexy or otherwise. A black lacquered papier mâché swimsuit, gleaming with 200 coats of varnish, was neither fantastical showstopper nor "I-want-one-now" wearable.

Having said that, the finale of rainbow-coloured poplin dresses, each with antique embellishment, was very pretty. Yet if this is one of the best designers in the London Fashion Week, it leaves little hope for the rest.