Welcome to the HERO SS15 daily roundup – the most important shows, themes and concepts, contextually curated for your reading pleasure. The best place to understand the week’s events in fashion.

The first day of London Collections: Men SS15 saw a New York brand, DKNY, close the schedule, with a mix of models and personalities walking to a pure Big Apple soundtrack. Why would they bother coming here, you might well ask? Because London is a city that knows how to express itself. And, to put it bluntly, it does not give a fuck if you don’t like what it’s saying.

Never forget our city was Beau Brummell’s stomping ground, a man who understood the importance of style and dressing above and beyond what’s passable. Passable is defeat. Pride in getting dressed exists today in not only what the man who polished his boots with Champagne pre-empted, Savile Row, which is in itself England’s haute couture for men, but on council estates all over the UK, where the right trainers mean everything. His attitude is ingrained in our culture.

The UK is firmly ingrained in menswear expression though style and tribes, and these things still reverberate today. There might be a bit of filler over London’s current three-day menswear schedule stretching the day out, but when the city hits the spot, it’s magic. What you’ll never find here is show after show of oatmeal suits. That’s not acceptable in a capital where folk would risk arrest wearing Westwood and McLaren’s Cowboy t-shirts. Be grateful for London’s ongoing transgressive streak, so intuitive we don’t often even realise it – it only becomes apparent in comparison.

What’s been fascinating about the first day of the new season collections is how strong a designer’s handwriting, in the case of Astrid Andersen and Christopher Shannon, two of the day’s highlights, are being built into instantly recognisable brands sold globally. Sellotaping clothes together to go clubbing in that disintegrate after 12 minutes is not acceptable anymore. We’ve grown up, and by adding quality finish to interesting ideas you get something formidable – it has got our talent competing with the biggest labels and Houses out there.

Anderson sent out a collection that paid tribute to Japan, a key market for the Danish talent. What resulted was a spectacular hip hop reimagining of traditional dress, set to bassy drawl that collided karate, Kimonos, a sumo finale with unflinching masculinity. That pride in getting dressed? Here it was, pushing things forward.

Pride was in Christopher Shannon’s collection too, with the designer producing a weird (he does that well) zip-up-the-back CAT boot, the kind you begged for for Christmas so exotic and desirable they’d be to a teenager. Bedroom wall collage fodder was turned into prints, Italian supercar logos coming up as Feeling Moody graphics. His pride in getting dressed was in teenage self discovery and experiment – naturally the inspiration was making something naff banging: young-adult candy including joss sticks, dolphin motifs and the like; things that promise enlightenment but ultimately would be bought from a shop covered in batik wall hangings constantly having a Closing Down sale.

Christopher Shannon SS15: Look 1

Matthew Miller reclaimed pinstripe from bankers and cut it up into slap-it-on patchwork, fitting for a designer who has offered the mantra Destroy To Create in the past. That destruction was to create a look that transposed the qualities of a double breasted onto youth in slip-on skate shoes. He understands that inside they feel as invincible as anyone who lights a cigar with a fifty, and it is youth who are the ones who are truly rich. They live, they feel. Miller spoke of his tribe as ‘walking battleships’ in the show notes – if you don’t know what he’s on about, at some point you will. It was a tribute, an armour and anxiety, a refusal all at once.

Matthew Miller SS15: Look 11

Jonathan Saunders made beige, stone, call the colour what you will, desirable. Peppered with metallics and mixing in women’s resort collection, the heavy set sunglasses of one of the models said it all. It was glamorous, amplified by the chemistry between the male and female. And though aspirational it was at once really identifiable – men and women aren’t separated in real life.

Richard Nicoll, as with Saunders, and Matthew Miller too, included women’s looks in his show. His block capital notes read efficiently: ‘innovative familiarity’, ‘personalised basics’, ‘urban classics’ and ‘utlitiarian elegance’. Who could put it better? These were interesting clothes that will make you look great and don’t scream ‘I paid a month’s rent for that’. They will up your sex appeal without even trying – and that is worth the month’s rent.

At MAN, Bobby Abley sent out skateboards in the shape of Sebastian from The Little Mermaid’s face, as well as the designers’ own name. He kicked, pushed his way to becoming one of the capital’s next recognisable brands. With pride, of course.

Check out our roundups of LC:M days two and three, plus Milan and Paris.