Jensen skates in to jolt fashion week with floaty dresses and brown tights

Designer Peter Jensen pirouetted into the spotlight at London Fashion Week yesterday with a catwalk show held on an ice rink that enthralled its audience.

Designer Peter Jensen pirouetted into the spotlight at London Fashion Week yesterday with a catwalk show held on an ice rink that enthralled its audience.

Ice skaters glided and leapt around the rink in west London wearing Jensen's spring/summer 2005 collection. During a downcast London Fashion Week, this unconventional show provided a welcome jolt of energy.

Pretty tiered sundresses printed with multicoloured fruit and vegetables, or line-drawn floral patterns inspired by the Danish designer and architect Arne Jacobsen, were worn with brown American Tan tights, the hosiery of Olympic figure skaters. A bright white cotton pea coat, ivory satin dresses and blouses decorated with bows all chimed with the emerging trend for white. Jensen, a newcomer to the official schedule of catwalk shows, named the disgraced American figure skater Tonya Harding as the muse for his collection. Designers usually cite long-dead socialites as the inspiration behind their frocks. Harding, convicted of hindering a police investigation into an attack on her competitor Nancy Kerrigan, is not an obvious choice.

Since he graduated from Central Saint Martins art college in 1999, Jensen has dedicated all his fashion shows to unlikely fashion icons, including Gertrude Stein, Cindy Sherman and Russian gymnast Olga Korbut. Unlike his latest muse, Jensen's designs for next spring are entirely sweet and innocent.

Earlier, Alistair Carr presented a luxurious and complex sportswear collection that showed off his technical skills. The 29-year-old, who was also showing on the official list for the first time, trained with haute couture corset-maker Mr Pearl and graduated from Central Saint Martins last year. His name is being touted as the hot new label to watch, despite only having two stockists in Japan and a single studio assistant. A blue sporty jacket, spliced with swags of satin was a feat of construction, as was a pale blue puffball dress created from 35 yards of silk chiffon. He is promising.

The art of spotting the next superstar is now a required pastime at London Fashion Week. Bobbie Hillson, the former course director of fashion at Central Saint Martins, lent her support to Carr but was cautious about the outlook for the new faces. "I do think they should be carefully selected, and the more mediocre designers left out. I mean, how many of the really brilliant ones can there be?" she said.