At Men's Fashion Week in London, a Changing of the Guard. Jonathan Player for The New York Times Looks from Martine Rose (left), J.W. Anderson (center), and Richard Nicoll (right). ROMAIN BRAU, a founder of the avant-garde-and-beyond Antwerp store RA, where the most mainstream designer on the menu may be the Belgian conceptualist Walter Van Beirendonck, depends on creativity and young talent to lure the most curious of shoppers. London is often the place where he finds them. "London is the best," Mr. Brau said. They have the structure and the sponsors to push those kids up. During a four-day fashion event that ended here on Sunday, dedicated for the first time to the city's men's wear designers, it was hard to miss Mr. Brau, a tall, slender, shaggy man wearing a chubby teal knit fur jacket over a sheer, bead-trimmed tunic and white long johns, which were tucked into his boots. On his head loomed a large bird, a tiara made of glittering sprays of peacock feathers, which he had to hold down to keep it from fluttering away in the breeze as he walked. Eccentricity is common in fashion. And London, with its prestigious design schools and reputation for producing figures of enormous creativity like Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen, embraces individuality more than other fashion capitals. So it was somewhat of a surprise that many of the young designers showing here this week offered a vision that was, to say the least, conventionally safe, either rooted in strict tailoring or the animated prints and neon sportswear of the 1980s. Rather than a rebellion, they gave us shorts, and quite a few varieties of them. A little rebellion would have been welcome, though it goes to show just how much London has changed from the days of Ms. Westwood's incendiary, royalty-snubbing collaborations with Malcolm McLaren, under the Sex label, that she was among the designers who attended an opening reception last week at St. James's Palace, hobnobbing with Prince Charles himself. "Somebody suggested I might even be an icon of fashion," the prince said at the party. It's taken me 64 bleeding years. Still, there was much to discover, and just enough to provoke, in London's first fashion event for men, which kicked off the spring season and will be followed by collections shown in Florence, Milan and Paris. Mr. Brau cited a promising collection by Kit Neale, one of three new designers in a group show called Fashion East, with prints of orange crayfish and pastel bomber jets that recalled cartoonish themes of children's bedsheets. Jonathan Anderson, who is making exciting work under the label J. W. Anderson, designed gender-challenging twin sets and pajama-like ensembles of painted lace, including a black one that, for many of the American editors present, called to mind the Comme des Garçons shirtdress that Marc Jacobs wore to the Costume Institute gala last month. There were great presentations with varying degrees of inventiveness from Jonathan Saunders and the quirky design team of Meadham Kirchhoff, labels that are quickly expanding beyond the boundaries of London. "There hasn't been a men's wear week here for as long as anyone can remember," said Christopher Bailey, the Burberry designer, who gave a party at the company's Brompton Road store, though he will still show his men's wear in Milan. Several American designers also arranged parties or dinners, including Tommy Hilfiger, Tom Ford, Thom Browne and Italo Zucchelli of Calvin Klein. More than 50 London designers presented collections, either on runways or in showrooms around the city. "It is an opportunity to showcase a new generation of designers and for other brands to get involved," Mr. Bailey said. In the end, what defined the disparate group who actually showed clothes in the inaugural event, called London Collections: Men, was not entirely different from men's wear of New York or Milan. The prevailing look, of vivid prints, board shorts, sweatshirts and athletic jackets, was derived from the West Coast streetwear and skater styles of the "80s, reflecting the universal hipster fashion of the moment, as well as the influence of the New York retailer Opening Ceremony, which is opening a store in London this summer. The similarities between the collections could, at times, be striking.