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LONDON — On the penultimate evening of London Fashion Week, Samantha Cameron, Britain’s first lady and British Fashion Council ambassador, and Natalie Massenet, the council’s chairwoman, co-hosted a cocktail event at 10 Downing Street to celebrate what both women were careful to call “British fashion,” a.k.a. the “most successful of our creative industries,” according to Ms. Cameron — bigger than film, music and advertising.

Note that they said “British fashion,” not “English fashion.”

What exactly does that mean these days? It’s a legitimate question, not just because of the Scottish independence referendum on Thursday, which has sparked a long, dark night of the soul among many in fashion who have personal and professional ties to the north that go beyond knitwear into formative myth. And not just because London art schools are now so globally renowned they attract students from numerous other countries who then stay to make their career in the capital.

But rather because the old stereotype of British fashion — of crazy creative types pushing sartorial boundaries without any regard for sales or sense or, sometimes, the finished seam — no longer really holds true.

Or mostly doesn’t. There are still some young designers such as Thomas Tait (who happens to be Canadian) whose mish-mash of bright pink and peach and yellow and nude in counterintuitive geometries saw a triangle jut out from a shoulder here, checkerboards flap from a skirt there and silk charmeuse dresses sliced and diced like an aesthetic experiment gone terribly wrong.

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But in general, you know something has changed when even Giles Deacon, a former agent provocateur of British fashion, left behind his once-signature cartoonish tendencies (or at least toned them down) in favor of some pop-flavored, but not overly exaggerated, jungle-lovin’.

A black jeweled snake curled down the front of a pink shift; giant pink panther paws were knit into oversize sweaters or appeared clasping one shoulder of an otherwise simply white jersey column; and black and white silk-screens of big cats were cut up and collaged onto billowing evening gowns and narrow trousers, paired with a simple white Peter Pan-collared shirt.

Meanwhile, at Peter Pilotto, the eponymous designer and his partner Christopher de Vos offset inventive use of materials — holographic organza and Perspex paisley and foiled lace (among others) — and a kaleidoscope of color by confining the exuberance of the fabrication to rigorously simple shapes: neat A-line sleeveless dresses, straight trousers, car coats and planed shifts.

It was a good thing, because otherwise the clothes might have risked sensory overload. Instead they telegraphed a controlled optimism.

That line also is well-walked by Christopher Kane, the Scottish designer who is now a part of the Kering luxury group, and whose show was dedicated to his tutor, Louise Wilson, the Central Saint Martins’ master’s course director who died in May. She had shaped a generation of British designers (and also, as it happens, grew up on the Scottish Borders).

Mr. Kane went back into his own archives, to themes he once explored during his course with Ms. Wilson, and then reimagined and reworked them. Playing with the idea of ropes and control and release, not to mention the palette (burgundy, navy, white) of a school uniform, he wove lariat embroideries into shift dresses, abstracted them into oh-so-appropriate braided suits and cardigans, and cutout the bodices of silk satin tea dresses so the fabric looked as if it caged the torso. Tulle bursts escaped from the seams of full skirts and the peplums of neat jackets.

“We are looking back to our time with Louise, but also looking forward,” he said, and in mediating experimentation with experience, he found true balance.

As it happens, Ms. Wilson was also a formative force in the career of Simone Rocha, who likewise dedicated her graceful show, a study in subtle contrast, to her teacher.

On one hand were little black jacquard dresses, cut slightly askew — just slipping off one shoulder, just hiked up on the hem — with downy trim smudging the edges; ditto cream trenches and trousers, like a bleached-out memory of the same. On the other was an explosion of red poppies and other blooms evocative of her family’s Hong Kong heritage. Resolving the two were metallic floral jacquard dancing dresses with a skirt-side hint of panniers, winking at historicism and once again fluttering feathers.

British designers, it seems, have finally left extremity to the politicians and, in its stead, defined a new, magnetic center for themselves.

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