'Breathtaking' Gucci brings frock and awe to London in celebration of origin story

On a picture perfect spring evening in London, 600 guests clutching tickets for Gucci's show at the Tate Modern gathered at the gallery's riverside entrance in their finery on Monday.

- Jess Cartner-Morley

An army of loafer-shod champagne waiters escorted the footballer Leah Williamson to her seat next to the actor Andrew Scott, while the K-pop star Lee Know stopped for a chat with Paul Mescal, and Dua Lipa paused to read the words of Mustafa the Poet, beamed in vast white lettering that covered the floor of the Turbine Hall.

Gucci Londra, staged in one of the city's most spectacular cultural spaces, was the kind of shiny, glamorous, see-and-be-seen night that has become less common in post-Brexit London.

London fashion week has suffered an erosion of profile with the recent departure of famous names such as Victoria Beckham, who now presents her collections in Paris. Shows of this awe-inducing scale are now far beyond the means of almost all British brands.