Style round up: London Fashion Week Men's

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In times when, it's been said, we have too many experts, perhaps the age of the fashion designer is over. Hail, instead, the self-appointed stylist who, presumably, knows a fashion designer to help with the difficult cutting and making bit. Certainly, for the 11th bi annual London Fashion Week Men's collections (for autumn/winter 2018), The Independent had rapper Tinie Tempah's What We Wear line down as giving "a whole new form" to, of all things, the tracksuit. It's further indication perhaps of our general descent into, above all clothing qualities, comfort.

But there is a gulf between comfortable – easy, relaxed – and not making an effort, and while The Telegraph was in favour of menswear likely to be worn by many men, rather than the exuberant few, it hailed the likes of designers Edward Crutchley, Daniel Fletcher and Bobby Abley as still creating "bold, left-of-centre clothes that stand out in a sea of greige". Here were designers with a distinct aesthetic, yet recognising a practical focus on "everyday style – solid, proper clothes that men want to wear".

It's a theme that is growing in menswear from season to season, but among the best purveyors of this were counted Christopher Raeburn, Lou Dalton – noted especially for her "fantastic knitwear in zinging colours," said the paper – and Oliver Spencer. Culture site theupcoming.co.uk described Spencer's urban vibe as offering "the perfect winter aesthetic", especially for its seductive use of rich velvets.

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Demand for the same ethos of wearability was noted by The Business of Fashion too, which championed the designers who managed to walk the tightrope of being "both creative and sellable – without selling out". Hussein Chalayan, for example, offered "brilliantly made clothes with a strong story behind them", while Xander Zhou "shined with his artful and witty cross-pollination of western and eastern tropes". Of course, in the end a lack of adventurousness in menswear design leads you to hardy staples such as those presented by Kent & Curwen, now majority-owned by David Beckham. He's upped its ante. But he also describes it as "multi generational – I can go into the store and find something great and my 15-year-old kid can [too]," he has said.

Where, one might ask, is the spirit of rebellion – the one that wouldn't have a 15 year old seen dead in a shop that also catered to a 42 year old, let alone his dad? The answer, The Guardian suggested, was in the Man showcase, this time focused on young designers Art School, Rottingdean Bazaar and Stefan Cooke. Against the former two, Cooke, the paper noted, "felt positively conventional, despite male models dressed in skintight python-printed jeans, carrying handbags". The revolution, it seems, will not be sanitised. Not yet, anyway.