Mary Katrantzou - Blown Glass

For her debut runway collection, Mary Katrantzou used every resource to pull together an impressive development of the bold placement prints and jewelry. Her motifs—simplified images of perfume bottles—packed a clean, colorful graphic punch and polish that belied the effort they had taken to assemble. "I found a printer called the Silk Bureau here in London," she laughed. "They do it in their garage."

Last season, Katrantzou's first offerings were all in a single shift shape. Their newness and wearability won plenty of takers on sight, but some were left wondering whether, as a textile specialist, she'd be able to broaden her line into different silhouettes. Katrantzou delivered impressively, adding fluted skirts and new dress shapes, long-line tubes, and zippered suede pants. Better still, she raised the level of her other talent as a jewelry designer, layering on giant necklaces constructed from gold tubing, chains, and mirrors. It may be about the toughest time to launch a business, but this is a young talent whose vision and attitude are, by every indication, just about perfectly adapted to make things happen for herself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For Spring 2010, the wavy, multicolored trompe l'oeil patterns were an intensification of the research into perfume bottles Katrantzou used last Fall. This time, she'd gotten sucked into the visual possibilities of the spiraling, fluid forms of artisanal blown glass. "It became more free-form, and kind of organic," she said of her collection. "We ended up naming some of the dresses Sea Tiger, Barracuda, and Yellow Inferno." To complete the theme, she asked a British master of art glass-blowing, Peter Layton, to make neckpieces and cuffs, and added gold Swarovski beading to a bodice section that "took six people three days to finish."

The result: far more sophisticated pieces than the front-only placement prints on shifts she did last season. It was a definite step forward for a Greek-born designer whose focus can be credited to the best creative education.

 

 

 

 

 

source: style.com