A first stop for printing is usually florals. People will marvel at the simple yet effective wonder of nature because when all else is lost, the beauty of earth will comfort in the bluest sky, the soft rippling waves, rainbows, butterflies.... blah, blah, blah...It works for Erdem, right? But Mary Katrantzou didn't just open the garden gate and jump straight into the flowerbeds. She found her way there down winding paths that gave her time to experiment and establish herself as London's reigning queen of print.
I'm glad she got here in the end. Her "nature vs nurture" interpretation moved with so much conviction through the natural world as it became perturbed by the influence of modern technology and synthetic fibres. It was a train of thought as much as a journey through time; recording the antagonistic struggle of organic vs artificial, as the two opposing worlds merge.
Re-examining her use of trompe l'oeil, pushed Mary out of literal prints and into an abstract world. However, the absence of this technique was not felt as graphics appeared so real and entrancing that you began to question the dimensions of the dresses. My eyes get lost somewhere between a school of tropical fish swimming over pixelated tin-can labels and mashed up carnations with jagged metal edges leaping from the background. On paper it was pandemonium; ""Man meets machine meets mother earth, an army of petal, metal, print," but visually, the colours saturated everything and became a calming force.
As the prints crashed into one another, they did not fight for attention, instead allowing your focus to glide naturally through the dress. Watercoloured flowers trickled softly down one side, punctuated by magnified coral reefs and shattered by images of car parts; blown up so much they seemed distorted. Rows of botanic patterns were repetitive on sheaths and seemed to be an ironic little parody of mass manufactured items, alongside the sporadic bursts of tin cans.
Maritime imagery of fish swimming the depth of the ocean was painted softly on sheers to excite the clarity of the water and explore the great unknown. This came as an introduction for more natural motifs such as feathers and scales which found paradox in Mary's optical illusion. These prints were given a metallic sheen to help them lose their cellular form and become part of the inanimate industrial lustre.
The clothes themselves evolved from Mary's previous avant garde structural peplums and rigid lines to emerge more feminine but just as bold. For s/s 2012 the wearable dresses ripened with soft draping trains and chiffon fluidity, juxtaposing the mechanical aesthetic and dense embellishment. Although completely consuming, everything had a simple shape. Dresses fell just above the knee and trouser suits flattered the figure but were subtly tailored to let the prints do the talking and curl around the body like ivy.
As the finale gown hit the catwalk, i lost my place in reality. I tried to find a starting point amidst the swirling layers of compressed embellishment camouflaged in hyper-realist print, but i couldn't. And i think that's the mark of a great designer; making you lose sight of what you thought you knew. In only her third year, Mary Katrantzou has blossomed and matured with a poignant collection that captures the emotional story telling of art and the effortless style of fashion- man made but not contrived.
"My approach was to look at flower fields and coral reefs in the form of repetition, to the point where they just become pixels, rather than organic elements. It was about trying to merge the natural and industrial worlds and doing something that's decoratively beautiful, but also to find beauty in how they interact. I wanted to make metal beautiful in the same way that flowers are,"
I'm glad she got here in the end. Her "nature vs nurture" interpretation moved with so much conviction through the natural world as it became perturbed by the influence of modern technology and synthetic fibres. It was a train of thought as much as a journey through time; recording the antagonistic struggle of organic vs artificial, as the two opposing worlds merge.
Re-examining her use of trompe l'oeil, pushed Mary out of literal prints and into an abstract world. However, the absence of this technique was not felt as graphics appeared so real and entrancing that you began to question the dimensions of the dresses. My eyes get lost somewhere between a school of tropical fish swimming over pixelated tin-can labels and mashed up carnations with jagged metal edges leaping from the background. On paper it was pandemonium; ""Man meets machine meets mother earth, an army of petal, metal, print," but visually, the colours saturated everything and became a calming force.
As the prints crashed into one another, they did not fight for attention, instead allowing your focus to glide naturally through the dress. Watercoloured flowers trickled softly down one side, punctuated by magnified coral reefs and shattered by images of car parts; blown up so much they seemed distorted. Rows of botanic patterns were repetitive on sheaths and seemed to be an ironic little parody of mass manufactured items, alongside the sporadic bursts of tin cans.
Maritime imagery of fish swimming the depth of the ocean was painted softly on sheers to excite the clarity of the water and explore the great unknown. This came as an introduction for more natural motifs such as feathers and scales which found paradox in Mary's optical illusion. These prints were given a metallic sheen to help them lose their cellular form and become part of the inanimate industrial lustre.
The clothes themselves evolved from Mary's previous avant garde structural peplums and rigid lines to emerge more feminine but just as bold. For s/s 2012 the wearable dresses ripened with soft draping trains and chiffon fluidity, juxtaposing the mechanical aesthetic and dense embellishment. Although completely consuming, everything had a simple shape. Dresses fell just above the knee and trouser suits flattered the figure but were subtly tailored to let the prints do the talking and curl around the body like ivy.
As the finale gown hit the catwalk, i lost my place in reality. I tried to find a starting point amidst the swirling layers of compressed embellishment camouflaged in hyper-realist print, but i couldn't. And i think that's the mark of a great designer; making you lose sight of what you thought you knew. In only her third year, Mary Katrantzou has blossomed and matured with a poignant collection that captures the emotional story telling of art and the effortless style of fashion- man made but not contrived.
"My approach was to look at flower fields and coral reefs in the form of repetition, to the point where they just become pixels, rather than organic elements. It was about trying to merge the natural and industrial worlds and doing something that's decoratively beautiful, but also to find beauty in how they interact. I wanted to make metal beautiful in the same way that flowers are,"
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