Mary Katrantzou – ‘Shoes’

With Mary Katrantzou Now One of the Hottest Names in Fashion, We Take a Look at Her Superb SS 14 Collection, (Including All the Backstage Glamour), Her Inspiration For This Collection, and Her Amazing Biography…

Mary Katrantzou

MARY KATRANTZOU – LONDON FASHION WEEK – SS 14

MARY KATRANTZOU - BACKSTAGE

Backstage Photography by Leah McQueen / Image of Mary Katrantzou by Alex Sainsbury

MARY KATRANTZOU – LONDON FASHION WEEK

SPRING/SUMMER 2014

For Spring/Summer 2014 Mary Katrantzou looks down. Her inspiration? FOOTWEAR!

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A veritable fetish for shoes, indeed an entire collection based around them. Shoes are objects of desire, worship even. The inmates of the Conciergerie, Marie Antoinette’s revolutionary prison, fervently kissed a mislaid shoe; Cinderella’s slipper ignites childhood desire. Shoes are a fetish, in the true meaning of fétiche – an object with mystical or magical powers. An object to enthral and entice.

Mary Katrantzou blows up the details of brogues, trainers and elaborate, embroidered evening shoes to create three distinct aesthetic adjuncts, a trio of collections in one. Micro becomes macro, shoes supersized. The decorative details of the three styles wrap around the garments, the definition of a head-to-toe look. Katrantzou rips the shoe apart, reinventing it as a total look. She keeps us on our toes.

This is no simple exercise in aesthetic reappropriation. The nature of the shoes themselves determine the identity of the garments. Brogues suggest a section of highly-polished daywear in structured shapes; sneakers are spliced to create sleek sportswear; evening mules are fantasias of embellishment, cocoons of luxurious texture and vibrant print. Indulgent and decadent, like an embroidered rococo slipper.

Highly-polished gentlemen’s brogues surrender punched leather details, lacing, serrations, abstracted and spiralled around the body.

Pleats are a key motif, inspired by the kilts of traditional Ghillie brogues.

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They are combined with ruffles to animate the garments.

Mary Katrantzou, ready to wear collection Spring Summer 2014 in London

Colours are natural, shoe shades of brown, black and ivory. Silk is photo-realistically printed to mimic the sheen of calfskin.

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Straps across the chest mimic the buckled strap of Monk brogues.

A shift, go-faster sports shoes are torn apart, reconfigured into muscular, taut, silhouettes, streamlined close to the body. This is true sportswear, athletic mesh and neoprene are flashed in neon-bright shades of cerise, yellow, cobalt and green, fused into dynamic, energetic styles, built for speed.

Mary Katrantzou, ready to wear collection Spring Summer 2014 in London

Bikers are cropped on the waist or elongated into coats, trimmed in rubberised leather and bonded, intricately patchworked and finished with extreme sports details like scuba zips and piped seams. The details of footwear become decorative devices, engineered to outline and define the female form. The practical becomes precious, Velcro straps, lacing, rubberised soles all recreated in exquisite fabrics, ingeniously reworked and jigsawed around the body.

Finally, evening, luxury, couture. In a second collaboration with the esteemed french embroidery house Maison Lesage, Mary Katrantzou draws on pieces from their archive, distorting and amplifying by 200%.

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Heritage seen with new eyes – she prints the embroideries, then re-embroiders some, an orgy of ornamentation, colour and texture.

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The mega-scale foliate embellishments, drawn from the 1960s, are applied to architectonic evening dresses and coats, abbreviated high on the leg.

Colours come from the eighteenth century, rococo shades of fuchsia, peridot, periwinkle and apricot. They are as delicate as the shapes are strong.

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Throughout, silhouettes are as sharp as a stiletto. Sliced high, definitive cutting across the upper thigh, they are knife-sharp canvasses for exuberant decoration. It is not only print, although – colourful and hyperrealistic, it is ever-present. Feathers, ruffles, silks and satins, all joyously riot, waltzing across the body of a woman.

Mary Katrantzou, ready to wear collection Spring Summer 2014 in London

Multiple fabric panels mesh together, as many as 28 in a single dress, creating technically ingenious networks of surface texture.

Unique gel applications offer sheens of colour, adhered and appliqued onto wool and silk. Embroideries of sequins, mirrors and swarovski crystal sparkle.

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A whirlwind technical exploration, an exercise in ingenious displacement through print, a surrealistic homage to Schiaparelli’s Shoe Hat evoked through an entire season of clothes, a whole wardrobe. Mary Katrantzou creates a collection where no two dresses, ironically, form a matching pair.

MARY KATRANTZOU 

BIOGRAPHY

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Mary Katrantzou was born in Athens in 1983, to an interior designer mother and an entrepreneur father. She moved to America for a BA in Architecture at the Rhode Island school of design, before transferring to Central Saint Martins to complete her BA degree in textile design. Graduating from her BA in 2005, Katrantzou shifted her direction from textile design to womenswear with a focus on print. She then went on to graduate in MA fashion from Central Saint Martins with distinction.

Katrantzou’s graduating show in 2008 mapped out her signature style. It was themed around trompe l’oeil prints of oversized jewellery featured on jersey-bonded dresses. These pieces created the illusion of wearing giant neckpieces that would be too heavy in reality. She also designed real jewellery made out of wood and metal that were exact replicas of the prints.

Mary Katrantzou’s first ready-to-wear collection debuted at London Fashion Week in spring/summer 2009, with the support of the BFC and the New Gen Scheme. Despite a small collection of nine dresses, Katrantzou picked up 15 prestigious stockists including Browns, Joyce and Colette. The designer achieved show status the following season, in Autumn Winter 2009.

Her thematic collections revolve around an icon of luxury, an object from art or design that a woman would not be able to wear if it were real. Mary has based the collections on perfume bottles, artisan blown glass, interiors and objects of Art, while keeping the printed image central to her aesthetic. She now boasts over 250 stockists ranging from Joyce and Colette to Selfridges and Barneys.

In 2010 Mary was awarded the prestigious Swiss Textiles Award. As well as producing a second collection for Topshop , she has also collaborated with Atelier Swarovski on a jewellery collection and worked with Couture house Lesage on her AW12 collection, a first of its kind collaboration with a London designer.

In November 2011 Mary was awarded the British Fashion Award for Emerging Talent: Womenswear and in February 2012 was awarded Young Designer of the Year at the Elle Style Awards. February 2012 saw the release of her much anticipated collaboration with Longchamp creating a capsule collection of their signature bags and totes.

For Autumn/Winter 2013 the collection revolved around black and white landscapes inspired by turn of the century photography. Resort 2014 marked Katrantzou’s first Resort collection, with prints inspired by the Autumn Winter landscapes, turned seasonally into full bloom.

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