XU ZHI AW20 VIRTUAL PRESENTATION from Xuzhi on Vimeo.

Designers taking part in London’s first all-digital showcase, which began Friday and runs through Sunday, have been delving deeper into their respective cultural backgrounds as they navigate the challenges of telling their stories online and in film formats.

Indeed, Saturday was a festival of fashion films – some better than others – with designers showing old, new and re-worked archive pieces in what is a new medium for many.

Tíscar Espadas, a Royal College of Art graduate and recipient of a Burberry scholarship, presented her collection with a video reflecting her Spanish heritage, from music and tap dancing to the wrap-around ties on blouses and the curve on the shoulders of jackets.

Espadas’s video, Capitulo: II, First Act, showed a man getting dressed and piling on layers of clothes against a simple white backdrop. It worked much better than some of the other film presentations, which have been playing with busy graphics, green screens and obscure narratives highlighting that fashion still has a long way to go in familiarizing itself with film.