Christopher Kane and Erdem Show Smart, Controlled Styles LONDON - Pinstripes with an edge of cool, surfaces smooth and metallic, and fashion show locations in a high rise building in London's financial district - could it be that city slick is making a comeback? The London equivalent of Occupy Wall Street may have seen its tents dismantled. But in other ways, young fashion designers, mostly living in the city's East End, are creating clothes that go back to former values but are made to seem streamlined and hyper-modern. Shows Monday were one-after-another examples of how correct and smart designers have become with their vivid patterns, perfectly controlled, and a taut tension between classic and creative. Christopher Kane is in a class of his own. Never a rebel, but always a designer whose apparently sweet clothes have a disturbing undercurrent, he sent out a collection that was literally darker than his previous shows. It opened with black, which quickly turned to gray pin-stripes for coats, skirts and sweaters. Staged in the same empty-shell high-rise as last season (which doesn't say much about the city's financial health), the mood shifted to moire fabrics, dresses with a sheen and a watermark pattern. "It all started with a Joseph Szabo image, where the girl was wearing a moire dress," said Mr. Kane backstage, referring to the photographer and his teenager subjects. As ever, the designer brought a discomforting sense of a dark underbelly to his apparently simple clothes - in fact, carefully worked to make unexpected fabrics, weird combinations and subtle constructions all look deceptively simple. He can take a motif from a previous collection - say a flower or a plasticized material - and make them fresh. So rose patterns (quite a theme this winter season) appeared in Japanese lacquer red, or plastic wire was woven into a lattice cardigan. The finale, with its dresses in the sinuous metal mesh pioneered by Gianni Versace, was so subtle because the chain mail effect was screened with cloth. There has been some concern that with his second day job, creating the Versus collection for Donatella Versace, Mr. Kane would be overstretched. It is more that, at only 29, he has grown up fast, adding a silver fox jacket and that pinstriped tailoring rather than his early whimsy. But when "slick" means an oily surface to a dress, Mr. Kane was showing his range. The vast new White Cube art gallery in East London, with an exhibition on Anselm Kiefer, was the modernist backdrop to a collection by Erdem Moralioglu. In his Erdem collection, he relished the juxtaposition of old elegance with new fabrics - and attitude. "It is my sense of what it takes to be a lady, a look back to 1960"s couture but with a tweed coat layered with Latex and bonded fabrics," said the designer backstage, explaining his feeling for strict lines to contain the dense embellishment. With Peggy Guggenheim, that kooky art collector, as his muse, Mr. Moralioglu used Latex inserts to stand in for duchesse satin, covered embroideries with trompe l'oeil effects and had tweed handpainted to take a day coat into night. The result was a slim silhouette, rich in special effects: a chiffon dress printed to look like tweed; lace, cut out and replanted on the bodice; eye-popping shades of yellow, blue, mauve - and that just as one decorated coat. With Old World couture as a score and high tech materials as instruments, the Erdem show was as pitch perfect as the Philip Glass soundtrack. The Peter Pilotto collection showed how sophisticated the design duo has become with print - introducing it to anything from contained, curving patches on dresses to metallic laminated quilted jackets (in collaboration with the Austrian outerwear label Schneiders). "It all started with our trip to Asia and its culture of modernity and tradition," said Christopher de Vos backstage, saying that he and his partner, Peter Pilotto, had been mesmerized by Japanese vehicles customized with thousands of lights. That translated as colors like blue, green and mustard yellow bursting from between the rigorous lines and shapes - or occasionally let loose as a fluffy fur stole (reminiscent of Prada). Ferocious flowers, so far removed from the pretty blooms of English heritage, were worked digitally to look like alien monsters. Yet the overall effect was still sleek, modern and totally under control as a wearable and womanly collection. In its modernity, graphic lines and textures, the Jonathan Saunders show lived up to its stunning setting at the top of a glass building in London's financial district, with a view across the high rises at sunset. Three features made this an exceptional collection: cut, texture and color. After last season's womanly shapes and almost 1950"s femininity, this collection had masculine touches like smart, double-breasted coats and snug jackets. Shapely dresses remained, with a flair to the skirt and perhaps a belt, making a convincing collection of winter day wear. Add explorations of color, from pine green to chartreuse and sky blue to turquoise, as well as shades of red, and the designer proved his subtlety and style. Then the collection introduced flower prints, but made them seem urban, especially a stand-out printed skirt and plain sweater. The designer, who won the British Fashion Council/Vogue award this year, proved how much he merited the accolade.