Greece’s leading fashion designer Mary Katrantzou received rave reviews from fashion critics worldwide for her 10-year anniversary collection for Spring/Summer 2019 at London Fashion Week.
“I’m proud that I was never scared of pushing the boundaries of what’s considered desirable, what’s considered wearable,” Mary told Vogue.
The new collection she says evokes “some of the techniques we’ve done in the past and silhouettes that we loved”, highlighting what Katrantzou has learned along the way.
Perfume bottles were printed onto tunic dresses for Autumn/Winter back in 2009 and have now been remade in metal mesh with crystal embroideries on top. Her design team continues to bring together the colourful crystal mesh dresses inspired by bottles of Eternity, Pleasures and Shalimar that have taken months to make. “They’re special because they connect back to my very first collection,” says Katrantzou.
The designer is celebrating an amazing decade of design and her models walked the runway paying homage to the real-life collections of women, art, jewels, and stamps.
Katrantzou's fine skill with prints was emphasised in this collection and some standouts were dresses featuring velvet pockets, each of which held a shimmering ring or jewel, and the Stephen Jones headpieces that accompanied the looks were runway gold.
Mary described her motivation behind the collection as an exploration of “the relationship between the pieces that we showed before that were referenced in the collection that walked today. So it was actually a dialogue between existing pieces and templates of pieces that are part of this season.”
“I was pleased to have the opportunity to look back and say, ‘I want to bring that back.’ I wanted to present it in a completely different context to what I did then and to cross-pollinate between different seasons. That is why we did the stamps and the long jewellery.”
Fashionistas including leading editors, Instagrammers, celebrities, and buyers saw an installation of 40 pieces from the Mary Katrantzou archive completing the link between the new runway pieces and references to Katrantzou's past 10 years and were all blown away with Mary’s distinct style.
Katrantzou who was born in Athens and now lives in London has her collections now sold in over 200 fashion stores, including Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, Barneys, Colette, 10 Corso Como, Mytheresa, Hiphunters, Stylebop, Opening Ceremony and Net a Porter, and throughout 47 countries.
In the past, Mary had a collection made for Topshop which launched in 2010 and sold out within weeks of release and she has also teamed up with Adidas and Longchamp, which was also a huge success!
