London-based designer Mary Katrantzou goes to bed at 5 a.m. everyday. No, she’s not out enjoying London’s underground fashion-centric party scene (although, we highly recommend it). She’s working. Hard. The most complicated of her spring 2013 dresses, which features printed Swarovski and metal mesh bonded to silk brocade, took two weeks to make. So as you can imagine, the 29-year-old doesn’t have a lot of free time. But her relentless work has paid off.
Since debuting her collection in 2008, the Greek-born designer has blossomed before our eyes. Upon her graduation from Central Saint Martins’s esteemed MA Fashion program in 2008, Katrantzou turned out simple shift dresses covered in brilliant tromp l’oeil digital images. Thanks to her signature skill of translating vivid pictures of everything from Faberge eggs and Ming vases to jewels and blown glass onto luxe fabrics, she has become known as London’s “Princess of Prints.” And one might think it easy to peg Katrantzou as a print designer, or to lump her in with the Technicolor cluster of young London talent. But in the last five seasons, Katrantzou has explored new materials (crystals, pencils, and metal among them), created sculptural silhouettes, and developed impeccable techniques (one dress from fall 2012 used 40 meters of fluttering chiffon), proving that she’s about much more than novelty imagery.
Having studied architecture before fashion, Katrantzou places a great deal of importance on super-constructed shapes, which are dictated by both the form and concept of her prints (for example, her spring 2011 collection stemmed from Helmut Newton’s photographs of interiors, so she designed structured lampshade-shaped skirts to showcase digital images of retro ’70s hotel rooms). Last season, she collaborated with French couture atelier Lesage to create extravagant Elizabethan-style looks. Structured bodices, bustles, and pleats followed the lines of her kitschy-made-covetable prints of typewriters, bubbles, and rotary phones.
After viewing her spring collection of strict lines and crisp but feminine silhouettes during London fashion week in September, it was clear that Katrantzou had progressed yet again. The designer pulled her spring inspiration from cultural exchange and printed her crisp designs with outdated bank notes from around the globe (like the drachma and a discontinued British pound), as well as stamps. She pushed her fabrics forward, too. Katrantzou worked with a French mill to develop a means of printing atop the abovementioned Swarovski chainmail. She found brilliant ways of draping silk jersey. And, for the first time, she worked with denim, an experiment that grew out of a new collaboration with Current Elliot, which will hit stores mid-February. ARTINFO caught up with Katrantzou during her recent trip to New York to discuss the pleasures and pains of working with prints, her design evolution, and what went into crafting her on-the-money spring looks.
Why were you drawn to stamps and currency this season?
It all started with the stamps. I thought it was really nice that they’re a means of cultural exchange. They’re essentially just pieces of paper, but they have so many symbols from different countries and I think there’s something really nostalgic about the fact that people collected them from far flung places in the world. But then I thought maybe “stamps” wasn’t enough of a statement, so I considered other cultural means of exchange and came to bank notes. If you zoom in on the patterns, they’re beautiful. And I only looked at obsolete bank notes. My work has been really image led and I wanted to work with something that’s more of a pattern. So it was about translating that and being able to play with silhouette more. Not necessarily going as theatrical as last season, but taking the graphicness and the flatness of the bank note and doing shapes that are a lot freer and more modern. Also, with the money, I thought it was interesting because it’s such a printed entity. And to weave those motifs and be able to blow them up and work them on the body in a really interesting way was exciting.
Given the financial crisis, and particularly the crisis in Greece, your collection could be interpreted as a political or economic statement. Was that your intention?
I wasn’t trying to make a political statement at all! I think because the drachma was one of the bank notes that I was referring to, everyone thought, “Oh, she’s referring to the drachma being in return or suggesting they’re going back to it.” But no! Not at all. It was more what the bank notes meant symbolically. You have all the political figures or flowers from that country or just things that have been really symbolic of the growth of all these countries, and I think there’s something interesting in bringing those cultures together and creating something new. That’s why I picked obsolete bank notes. Even the pound that was there, it was an old pound — a discontinued design. In the end, it’s just about a dress that’s desirable. But I always like picking themes with depth so there’s room to explore something that’s out of context or a bit more subversive than the actual inspiration.
You worked with a lot of new fabrics this season, particularly the brocades. Can you speak about your fabric choices?
We started the collection wanting to limit the color palette. There was a lot of black and white. We also worked with denim this season, which we hadn’t worked with before, so there was more of an ease. Actually, when we started this collection, I was in the midst of designing a capsule collection for Current Elliot, which was based on visa stamps, instead of postal stamps, so it was a version of the same idea. But at the same time we did pieces in our collection in denim like a skinny pant with a bank note print.
What was it like working with denim for the first time?
It was a challenge. There’s so much detail in the washes. We did a lot of potassium bleach and laser etching and different techniques just to kind of get to grips with what you could do with denim. But it was really interesting because I’ve used so much silk and last season we were collaborating with Ecole Lesage and it was all about couture, so it was nice to work with the polar opposite and use an everyday fabric.
Speaking of the couture elements you had last season, this season the silhouettes seemed much simpler and cleaner. What was the thinking behind that transition?
I did want it to be a lot simpler just because last season, it was very restrictive. It was all about Elizabethan corsets and bustles so you felt that I had to go the opposite direction this season and create something that was a lot more free on the body. The silhouette should be relevant to what you’re doing every season. So I think with the bank notes and the postage stamps, because of their shape and what they create graphically on the body, you can take it there. It was important for me for the attention to be on the brocade. We also printed on metal mesh and Swarovski crystal mesh. That was a completely new technique that’s never been done before. It was about exploring different fabrics. For the postage stamps, we did cotton dresses and raffia tunics and denim pleated dresses and a lot more easy fabrics, more day fabrics. Then for the bank notes, it was pretty much all brocade. There wasn’t anything printed.
What are some of the biggest challenges you find working with prints? What role do they play in your design process and do you ever feel constrained by them?
Working with print is a way for me to play with the visual language. It’s recognizable and it’s become my signature. But at the same time, I don’t think I’m just about prints. There’s a lot of work that gets done in the architectural shape and the construction of the pieces and [the prints and construction] kind of play to each other’s strengths. It’s very much about balancing the two, so one will kind of inform the other. Now, I feel it’s more important for me to showcase in a more evident way that my work isn’t just prints, and that’s why I started with the brocade this season. I think the visual image and the attention to craftsmanship, the fabric, the colors, and the textures will always be there, but print doesn’t need to be the defining element of the collection.
Where do you find yourself going for inspiration and how important are art and architecture in your process?
I think architecture has become more and more important. When I first started, I didn’t see how it could be relevant but it is and the way you see a 3-D form around the woman you almost dress her in a second skin. But my skins usually are not just a skin; they have 10 dimensions. So it’s nice to be able to showcase your vision in many different ways and have seasons where you do go more sculptural. I’m sure the fact that I studied architecture has a certain role to play in how I see a silhouette. But at same time, there are other seasons that it should just be about the fabric that you’re using or the visuals that you’re using.
On the technical side, how much work and detail went into this collection?
Technically, there’s a lot of work going into the shape and the print and it takes us about three months to engineer everything. The biggest difficulty in this collection was that we were trying some things that we’ve never tried before, with printing on the Swarovski mesh. And Swarovski supplied me with little squares of this mesh and we needed to open each link by hand and then close it back up with a tweezer to make the fabric. We did so many tests to find out how to print on the mesh and we found somebody who prints on glass, so they did it for us. When you actually print on it, the print gets set with a UV light and then you take it back and hand make it again into the garment. Every single one of those dresses took about two weeks to make. Working with denim was a story of its own because of all the different washes and the shrinkage, but it does work like one of the more sculptural fabrics. Then, in the nylon dresses, those are made with about 40 meters of nylon and you don’t even see it exists. And there’s print engineered in all those 40 meters. Also, it was a different language for me because there was nothing fitted and the season before was super fitted, so it was just a different silhouette completely.
What do you hope people take away after seeing this season’s collection?
I think it was a move forward for me. I want them to look at the different shapes and the different fabrics that we used because I think that’s a transition for us. Also, I’d hope they’d appreciate the theme. I think it’s important that there’s something very signature in everything I do, and that the clothes are done in a way that people want to wear them. Some people have a crazy idea and put it on a dress and they selfishly want you to love it just because it’s novelty, but I think there needs to be more than that. You need to wear the dress and think, “OK, I do feel unique but I actually feel pretty and I feel interesting and I feel confident.” So hopefully, a lot of confident women will be wearing stamps and bank notes.
Visit Artinfo.com/fashion for more fashion and style news.
BLOUIN Fashion is now on Twitter. Follow us @BLOUINFashion.