LONDON — Pay no attention to the men behind the curtain!

The eagerly anticipated spring 2016 show by Erdem began with low giggles from the crowd on Monday afternoon as a platform bearing models was pushed down the long length of a brown, be- fuzzed runway at the King’s Cross Theater by subterranean crewmen. A leaflet on the seat arm containing a detail from the Andrew Wyeth painting “Christina’s World” gave a hint of what was to come.

Erdem Moralioglu, the half-Turkish favorite of the British Fashion Council chairwoman Natalie Massenet, would be drawing from naturalistic Americana.

There was, indeed, a feeling of the open prairie in black ribbons tied around necks and Mr. Moralioglu’s homemade-looking frills, exquisite floral prints and bared shoulders and elbows. But as it also was as dark as the Little House in the Big Woods after sunset, it was frankly difficult to assess the dresses.

As the models bottlenecked at the foot of a staircase during the finale, leading up to another platform across which they had to tromp in high heels and then, carefully, descend in their swishing midi-length pinafores, one couldn’t help thinking of a surely unintentional resonance with Mr. Wyeth’s crippled subject.

The more thoughtfully illuminated Mary Katrantzou showed a dazzling collection at her alma mater, Central Saint Martins, on Sunday evening.

On-the-ground, around-the-clock dispatches from the spring 2016 shows, brought to you by the editors of Styles and T.

Many question the point of fashion shows, especially now that they are streamed around the world instantly: a hundred thousand points of light. But Ms. Katrantzou’s intricately patchworked creations were a reminder that if the work is this good, it is cheapened and flattened by photographs. Seeing it in person is like the difference between visiting a planetarium and lying under the unpolluted nighttime sky.

This comparison occurs, perhaps, because Ms. Katrantzou’s clothes were cosmology-themed (and how refreshing to have a designer guided by cosmology, not cosmetology — or worse, astrology). Yet while regarding their complex and sometimes floral iridescence in the blue- floored hall before reading the program notes, I flashed on ocean depths and the colorful creatures that dart and lurk around the waving plants there.

Like Mr. Moralioglu, Ms. Katrantzou offered basically one dress silhouette, sometimes layered over pants or ribbed toeless tights: short enough to expose the knees, and flared. There was bohemian quilting, and channeling — of graphic lace and metallic thread, not psychic vibes (though she also invoked Rorschach blots and Ariadne’s thread).

A few of the skirts had stiff ruffles attached at the sides. “Fins are the new peplums!” I thought, grasping excitedly for trendlets as I remembered a similar treatment on the skirts of the more accessible Holly Fulton, whose show was earlier in the week. The fins popped up again the next morning when Roksanda Ilincic, the queen of colorblocking, ventured into uncharacteristically ethereal territory this season with pink and yellow formal dresses for her Roksanda label.

While fashion used to be a school of fish all swimming in the same direction — hemlines up or down — it’s now more like a tropical aquarium, with its flamboyant occupants jostling to nibble at the rock.

Vivienne Westwood used her Red Label show, as is her custom, to make a political statement: lining staff members in colored paper crowns on a balcony, hoisting placards protesting fracking, climate and austerity measures.

“This is a ridiculous and pathetic parody of what it used to be,” a voice intoned over the loudspeaker, alluding, one assumes, to the compliantly clicking and posting assemblage below. But the fact is, for all the strenuous subversion, this was still a fashion show, with spectators tweeting and Instagramming the designer’s clothes along with the political messages. They were fine examples of the Westwood standard: the draped 1940s-ish necklines, knit corsetry and lean pantsuits.

But if she really wants to fight climate change, perhaps it’s time to pull out of the fashion cycle and just sell from her rich and copious vintage archives.

At noon on Sunday, in a specially constructed house of mirrors near Central Saint Martins, Jonathan Saunders staged his show under a blazing sun that singed some editors’ scalps. This season he is fond of orange and yellow, splicing slipdresses on the diagonal and tying loose scarves around the hips and neck. A print specialist, Mr. Saunders was attempting kimono-like ease, throwing in stripes, spots, brocade and kaleidoscopic bursts for his famous, heat-seeking clients. But the overall effect was floppy, even sloppy, when compared with Ms. Fulton’s rigorous tailoring of similar fabrics.

At Preen, too, there were prints in profusion: skirts in a modern, graphic gingham and floral dresses worn with flats, the models mechanically circling the rotunda of City Hall in their flat footwear as if they were planning on taking over the government.

When the roving eye of London Fashion Week needs to rest from such pattern play, it turns with relief to Margaret Howell, who showed her typically crisp, no-nonsense style on Sunday morning at the home of Rambert, the contemporary dance company. Fall is more Ms. Howell’s season than spring, I feel, given her preference for neutrals and cozy cardis — but here she gamely produced paperbag waists in a poppy palette and plenty of white cotton, cut with lime. It was the sartorial equivalent of a dry gin and tonic.

Pringle of Scotland is a label that, like many others in Britain and elsewhere, has been trying to capitalize on its heritage — I mean, talk about a cozy cardi! But only the faintest traces of this were evident in its ready-to-wear collection. Intimations of argyle showed up in a long cream-colored sheath dress whose fabric looked almost Miyake-like, and two of the models carried bags that could have doubled as tea cozies.

The rest of the collection, with its loosely knit fisherman knits and raffia- looking vests, might have been ripped from the chorines of “Mamma Mia!” — still playing in London, at a theater oblivious to fashion’s many small dramas.

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