MARY KATRANTZOU....Princess of Prints

The business of prints in fashion is a risky one at best and yet Ms. Katrantzou has built a business and a reputation based on prints. She continues to employ the digital image prints that Alexander McQueen had begun to popularize before his untimely demise.
This season her inspiration, a subject which rarely holds any gravitas when looking at a collection, was based not on style icons but possessions of style icons. Here we can include items from Faberge, Ming Dynasty, Meissen or cloisonné, all of which have been translated into the prints she uses and then in turn reimagined into the collection she showed this week. These are not the clothes of Babe Paley, Gloria Guinness or Marella Agnelli but the collection does reflect their possessions.
The collection is in the constructed more rigid style that has defined Ms. Katrantzou’s work up to this point but this season she opted to include some softer silhouettes which will guarantee her a wider audience. The more constructed pieces are wonders of the art of fashion design and construction while these newer softer styles suddenly open up a much wider range of possibilities while still retaining the prints which are so linked to the eponymous collection.