London Fashion Week Finds Fun in Teaspoons and Telephone Dials

伦敦时装周在茶匙和老式电话拨号盘间发现乐趣

 

茶匙、浴盆、老式电话的拨号盘、打字机、衣服挂钩、巧克力，这些生活之物，对你我而言，极为寻常，不足为奇；它们却往往成为时尚设计师的灵感源泉。设计师 Mary Katrantzou 毕业于中央圣马丁艺术与设计学院，在时尚印花领域，声名鹊起，被誉为数码印花皇后。她将茶匙、浴盆和老式电话的拨号盘等符号应用到时尚印花设计中，为本次伦敦时装周，带来无尽乐趣。无独有偶，在服装配饰界叱咤风云24载的手包设计师 Anya Hindmarch 将巧克力元素巧妙应用到设计之中，奇妙多多。

 

 

 

模特儿展示 Mary Katrantzou 在伦敦时装周的作品

 

London fashion week may have grown up in recent seasons but it has not lost its sense of fun. That was the message on the catwalks on Tuesday as mundane objects such as typewriters, coat hangers and Quality Street chocolates, took centre stage.

 

At the Mary Katrantzou show, the designer elevated everyday items to couture status. A print of a bathtub, its foam bubbles made in relief from encrusted pearls, appeared on an Elizabethan-inspired, high-necked silk top. Teaspoons made up the repeat print on a peplum while an old-fashioned rotary telephone dial print decorated a stiff silk cape. Silk trousers completed the look.

 

As quirky as it all sounds, the result was far from silly. This collection, as Katrantzou explained backstage, was about "celebrating the beauty in the everyday" and "elevating the mundane to the sublime". Hence the prints being realised in the form of peplums, bouncy bustles and chiffon capes. These are cuts borrowed from couture and although the prints may have been unexpected the results were incredible, with the show among the best of the week.

 

One pencil skirt stood out. Embroidered with hundreds of real yellow HB pencils, this "pencil-pencil" skirt was complemented by a top with the more traditional embellishment of Swarovski crystals. The skirt was embroidered by Lesage, the first time the French haute couture house had worked with a London fashion week designer. Were they surprised by the pencils? "They were very intrigued," said Katrantzou.

 

Katrantzou, a Central Saint Martins print graduate, is fast gaining a reputation as the queen of digital prints. To execute such mundane inspirations with taste and refinement, rather than with an amateurish nudge-nudge-geddit wink, takes real class. Tuesday's collection highlighted a growing brand with enormous potential. Backstage, international buyers clamoured to congratulate her.

 

Anya Hindmarch has built an accessories empire over the past 24 years, but this year was her debut show. The handbag designer said she had been thinking about Quality Street chocolates before making a presentation that was camp, theatrical and excellent fun.

 

The catwalk scene was set up as a Willy Wonka-esque factory. Workers in overalls and Hilda Ogden-style floral headscarves with cigarettes hanging from their mouths served cups of tea before the show began. Ferris wheels turned, conveyor belts with glittery handbags boxed up like Barbie dolls trundled past the front row and clutch bags lit up in the hands of white-gloved puppeteers. As the show ended a curtain dropped to reveal the designer – mad professor-like – cycling on a bike that powered the factory machinery.

 

This exuberant show – the direct result of Hindmarch appointing a chief executive for the business side of her brand, leaving the designer free to focus on the creative side – ended with conveyor belts tipping thousands of Quality Street chocolates out at the audience, who reacted with childlike glee. "I wanted to capture that sense of excitement," said the designer, "because accessories are all about excitement for me".

 

（英文信息来自伦敦艺术大学）

 

 

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