Fashion week is firing on all cylinders.
Technically, it’s a trade-only event to showcase the spring/summer 2013/14 collections due for retail delivery from June. But Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Australia whips up waves of thrills among ordinary mortals too, thanks to high traffic on most social media channels and, for the first time this year, an innovative schedule of livestreaming on www.jasu.com.
By mid-morning, Day One, Jasu.com’s teething troubles of intermittent freezing were all but soothed, and the web was awash with selfie reviews of Camilla & Marc, Aurelio Costarella, and Bec & Bridge, seen from the front-row comfort of thousands of laptops and phones around the country. Thrills indeed. Here is Voxfrock’s pick of the morning:
CAMILLA & MARC
Pictures: Lucas Dawson Photography
Fashion week’s kick-off show slot isn’t a bad way to celebrate 10 years in the fickle, cut-throat business of fashion. Brother and sister design team Camilla Freeman Topper and Marc Freeman deserve the accolade for sticking to their aesthetic – youthful but high end – and refining it to an impeccable zenith during that decade. The partners presented clean cut silhouettes that Mrs. Freeman Topper had described earlier as; “a bit of an ode to the past and a look into the future”. They were inspired, she said, by those hollow Russian dolls that fit one inside the other. Ostensibly, she meant the collection was about layers but Voxfrock was more intrigued by the juxtaposition of crisp, contrasting block-coloured components with patterns or thick, sparkling tailored brocade.
First exit was a short dress (Camilla & Marc does a masterly micro hemline) in a liver-red mottled print pattern, its bodice fitted, its skirt neat and short. It was a clever, low-key start. The same silky print came later teamed with dropped-crotch zuoaves (with typical bagged effect at the back that I think so unlovely but which junior niche markets continue to find irresistable) slung low about the hips. A tiny tulip wrap skirt in the same print was belted at the proper waistline and worn with long sleeved white blouse in a cartoonishly pretty career girl combo. An aubergine trouser set with wide-leg patio trousers and loose, cutaway sleeveless blouse, moved with the slap and graceful drape of crepe. Another trouser set with tailored top was belted, as if by afterthought, high over the waist. Later, a tightly tailored white trouser suit got the same belting treatment.
Pencil skirts were soft-fitted to the models’ backside and glamourously narrowed toward the knee with back vents to enable a freer gait. Experiments with the concept of pantslessness, so widely explored by several designers in Milan and Paris recently, came in a group of gossamer French lace pencil skirts and fitted dresses with a sliver of knickers and nipples showing through. The designers played with assymetry too, layering flat panels off-kilter or fluting the layers of stiff little skirts and frocks into slack cones.
The stiffness worked harder in another set: a toothpaste-white mini-shift and fluted skirt with below-knee hemline, in what appeared to be leather but which was stuff as stiff and ungiving as cardboard . It’s an aethetic showing up in many progressive collections and is best understood by the junior niche if you ask moi.
Finally, a group of thickly patterned green-gold brocade separates including a show-girl body and tailored jacket were glossy as metal and juxtaposed with the gossamer transparency of lace. It’s a relatively simple juxtaposition of opposing elements but one that achieved sexiness and sophistication in equal, restrained measure, and which requires a decade of design experience to perfect.
Happy anniversary, Camilla and Marc.
Janice Breen Burns, jbb@voxfrock.com.au
