LONDON: Victoria Beckham unveiled a timelessly chic collection in the ornate court of Britain’s Foreign Office on Sunday as environmental demonstrators shut the road outside to protest waste created by fast fashion.

The fashion pack were forced to pass their handbags through metal detectors before entering the majestic Durbar Court, where they sat among doric columns of polished granite.

The models sashaying along the marble floor wore long silk dresses in powder pink or purple, and blouses with big collars and houndstooth jackets for an elegant seventies look.

Beckham’s husband, ex-footballer David, and their four children — Brooklyn, Romeo, Cruz and Harper — were in the front row to watch, alongside Anna Wintour.

“Lightness, easiness, freedom — those are the ideas I was thinking of for this collection,” the British designer, a former member of the Spice Girls pop group, said in the notes for her Spring-Summer 2020 collection.

“There’s a play between precise masculine tailoring and floating soft dresses that let the body breathe inside them,” she said.

Outside, around 20 Extinction Rebellion activists intercepted guests in a protest against fast fashion, which critics say is one of the world’s most polluting industries.

“We are here to protest against that endless obsession with buying new clothes,” one said as they held up signs declaiming the “ugly truth about fashion”.

The group earlier briefly shut Whitehall, the main road running past government ministries to parliament.

They had gathered on Friday in blood-stained white robes near the entrance of the main London Fashion Week venue in central London as the week kicked off.

Published in Dawn, September 16th, 2019