Accolades are still popping like champagne bubbles across social media for Toni Maticevski today.
Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Australia was tick-tick-ticking over eversonicely yesterday when – boom! – the modest Melbourne designer shooed his spring collection onto its boxed-H runway.
“Soooo….OMG!!”hooted fashion week’s Lost For Words. “Just amaaaayzing!”, trilled its legions of Girlybloggers. “His best yet!”, crowed The Sage and Knowing Brigade. And, so it was. All those things. As usual.
I recall two fashion weeks past when editors sobbed at the rare loveliness of it all amid Mr. Maticevski’s post-show backstage melee. Back then, he was lesser known and the accolades breathless, tinged with surprise; “Just. So. Beautiful”, “Un-be-bloody-lieavable”.
And so this collection was again. Quite wonderful.
I know I bang on ad nauseum about the value of intuition, fabric knowledge and creative restraint in fashion’s design process but here, I hardly need to. There are few more accomplished masters of that holy trinity than Toni Maticevski.
This was a more varied collection than usual, from the heavy, swaying Dior-esque skirts for which he has recently become renowned, to a group of pale silk cigarette trousers slung with soft hip sashes, to one or three memorably slender dresses cut, stiffly gathered and zipped to enhance feminine shoulders and clavicles, waists. One of these, in black, notably featured a neckline sculpted with a fin of fabric jutting across the model’s clavicle like an echo of Mr. Maticevski’s long-gone sketching pencil.
Skirt volumes and stepped, fluted skirt layers, are fleshy and thick, controlled with expert drape and gathers and usually released from slender waistlines. Some skirts drop generously to the ankles – a flattering ploy that optically “slims” and enhances the well-turned – and sway in graceful rhythm as models walk. In enough exits to notice, models also inexplicably carried the heavy top layer of a mille feuille gown or roomy front frock panel, apparently instructed to ignore the golden catwalk rule to “never fuss or interfere”. The effect was poignant: mo-derne Cinderellas gathering up their fantastic ensembles to flee the ball.
Mr. Maticevski’s palette and patterns are restrained, yes, then no, then yes, then no, then yes, then… He renders prettyshiny brocade-like and spangled sequinned fabrics, for example, pale and elegant, or darkly graphic, near medieval, juxtaposed with jags and panels of white. Any designer less gifted would render the stuff cute, or worse, ostentatious. Later, he dabbles in a sporty look in a group including a black, cross-strapped midriff top, bound in white and worn by a model with – thank heavens, because the bandeau was so narrow – no breasts to speak of. A marvellously intense fluoro orange also appears in a waffle textured boxy top, then a fat, loosely gathered fingertip coat worn cape-like over what is essentially, a white strapless bombshell frock with interesting gathers and a heavy pinkorange mesh front panel, peplum and skirt spangled with lurex. A poem to contemporary glamour. Who else?
In another dramatic exit, a small Maticevski-esque triumph: a combination of graphic mural check print, rich satin floral brocade, and honeycomb mesh – all stars of their own sub-stories elsewhere in the show – now synthesised in a single, lavish long sleeved blouse and fat, bouncing skirt ensemble.
Maticevski, Geniuski: indeedydoody.
Janice Breen Burns, jbb@voxfrock.com.au with Terry Carruthers, info@voxfrock.com.au
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