Sarah Burton took the Romantic poet, painter and printmaker William Blake as her inspiration this season, filling the collection with ruffles, shredded tulle and pastel prints inspired by the artist’s work.

The designer said she wanted to “draw on the concept of imagination as a pure form of escapism,” and said the collection was based around lightness, air and water, “and on beauty emerging from darkness.”

Her man has rarely had such feminine flair, what with the single, asymmetric ruffle tumbling down the front of a printed cotton blouse; the long skirts with frills made from shredded tulle, and the tuxedo jackets with shoulders that looked as if they’d been slashed by a swashbuckler’s sword.