Cosmic Katrantzou Crosses the Universe

LONDON, United Kingdom — The handful of dresses which opened Mary Katrantzou's show today, were among the most beautiful she has ever created, which is really saying something in light of her past achievements. They were like gazing into the cosmos, with the radiance of a billion stars suspended in a diaphanous darkness. Of course, it was sequins and crystals and layers of chiffon that achieved this effect, but when Katrantzou mentioned "layers of magic realism", we knew exactly what she meant.

She'd actually been talking about Time of the Gypsies, the cultish 1988 movie from Yugoslavian director Emir Kusturica. Its extraordinary atmosphere has coloured a surprising number of fashion collections over the past few decades. And that was where this collection began, in a consideration of folkloric dress in the Balkans. Something quite different for Katrantzou, but it inspired a strong new line in tailoring, "without the embellishment people might expect," she added. No bullion thread, no detail trim, just the graphic lines of sequin tape. The patchworked florals were more elaborate. They also had a folkloric tinge, though they were actually pieced together, said Katrantzou, like Rorschach blots. (Always layer upon layer with Mary.)

It was, however, the cosmic flair of the collection that provided its ultimate frisson. If the blue of her catwalk was supposed to represent the sea, and the huge mirrored backdrop was the heavens, the dresses were clearly the stars. Katrantzou drew on the suitably arcane Flammarion engraving of the cosmos from 1888 for the collection's visual motifs, naïve archetypal shapes like spirals and circles breathtakingly reproduced in lace. The timeframe might have been all-wrong, but the irresistible analogy was alchemy, the transmutation of base materials into something rare, precious and beautiful. And Jamie Bochert's luminous semi-flapper dress is surely an early candidate for look of the season.