“The Red Shoes”
This season, the OLT girl is a possessed pin-up, like a ballerina on mushrooms or a demented Kate Bush. She is elegant and sexy, fierce yet fragile, bold but feminine.
For fall-winter 2015, Olympia Le-Tan combined inspiration from Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes with her beloved Kate Bush, and some 70s London nostalgia, adding the usual touch of humour and naughtiness.
The colours go from soft dusty pink, mousey grey and light olive green, to a more intense burgundy or Prussian blue.
The fabrics are traditional, Harris tweeds and cotton velvets reminiscent of Olympia’s very British childhood, 2 hand-woven tweeds were made exclusively for the collection by French mill Malhia Kent, a cotton organdy is mixed with macramé while the silk chiffon is printed with Pierre Le-Tan’s drawings of the season (a bunch of trippy ballerinas or sketches for the costumes of an imaginary ballet).
Those illustrations as well as some more graphic black and white motifs are turned into felt appliqué embroideries, dancing around a skirt or crawling up a pair of trousers.
Swan Lake and The Nutcracker also make an appearance in bag or belt form. And the décor’s almost closed curtain becomes surrealist sequin embroidery on some evening looks.