When a vast dust storm sweeps up outside the Battersea Power Station — the result of Sienna Miller beating a hasty retreat from the Matthew Williamson show via helicopter — one wag is overheard commenting, “Too bad they didn’t blind us before the show began.” Who can blame Miller for reenacting a scene out of the fall of Saigon — wouldn’t you run screaming from shredded militaria and macramé harnesses gone amok? When Williamson’s traditional floaty multicolored chiffons finally drift down the runway, albeit held up this time by macramé straps, they are familiar if not 100 percent welcome houseguests.

The next day, it’s all about one wedding and a funeral — the latter being the memorial service for Alexander McQueen, at which Björk, clad in wooden wings, reportedly sings Billie Holiday’s “Gloomy Sunday,” a song so depressing that when it was released in the thirties, it was banned from the radio; people supposedly jumped out the window when they heard it. And the wedding? This belongs to Erdem, who holds his show in a white tent in the middle of Bedford Square. It’s a beautiful day to view exquisitely worked, lavishly embroidered white lace frocks, many with a splash of blood-red to keep things interesting.

Blindingly bright neon hues at Christopher Kane — orange, lime green, hot pink — emerge first as suits made of fabric that has been printed to look like lace; later in the show, the same shades are employed in real lace. In its restrained way, it’s hot and sexy — you can see why Donatella Versace has enlisted Kane for her Versus line — though hardly la vie bohème, which is why we come to London in the first place, is it not?

Though a video of Louise Gray’s charmingly nutty show plays in the lobby of my hotel and depicts the kind of louche, off-the-grid fashion that I associate with this town (her show takes place before I get here), it isn’t until I view Meadham Kirchhoff that I experience this for myself.

In an old railway station that was formerly the Waterloo Eurostar depot, the pair, who rarely disappoint in the drama department, have built a fantasy garden of feather plumes and lollipop flowers. When I see their army smocks over pink ruffles, and the garments decorated with blown-up silk-screens of what I believe is Man Ray’s photo of Kiki de Montparnasse, and the painted yellow leather jackets, and the models’ hair (which seems to be inspired by a combination of Rainbow Brite and My Little Pony), I remember why I am always so anxious to cross the pond in the first place.

It’s a memory I hold on to during the two blockbusters of the week: Pringle of Scotland, which will interest those Rogers and Hammerstein fans in the audience who find themselves longing for what might be called “The Celine with the Fringe on Top” — in this case a shreddy blue thing over the inevitable camel-colored plain-as-pudding skirt. But this will seem like a bastion of refinement compared with the offerings at Burberry, where the heavily embellished, overwrought, super-short biker jackets give new meaning to the words bourgeois and decadent.

Three models trip and fall during the show, and their embarrassment, alas, is not confined to the audience at the Chelsea Art Museum. The entire show is being live-streamed, so their humiliation — and their triumph, at least in one case, when a model dispenses with her shoes entirely and walks the runway barefoot to scattered applause — is broadcast to the entire world.

See the full collections here!
• Burberry Prorsum
• Christopher Kane
• Erdem
• Louise Gray
• Matthew Williamson
• Meadham Kirchhoff
• Pringle of Scotland