Wed 21st September
“It’s weird how we start with these random ideas of collages of vintage negliges with vintage basketball t-shirts and tulle sleeves hanging on our wall and then punkish references and then Baroque and then skaters but its only really when you see one of the girls wearing it that it makes sense. Is it that thing of every girl being all these things in a way?” There’s something rather lovely about the way Marques’Almeida design for girls. Not some imagined character that lives in their head, but for actual, real life girls. Girls they know. Girls they let dress themselves and walk their runway. It’s a refreshing to view their designs how they’d exist off the runway. This season was a hotch-potch of influences, as evidenced from the snippet of conversation that makes up their press release. This was quite top heavy. A baroque influence will do that though. Floral slips were trimmed with lace and the the aforementioned tulle sleeves and basket ball t-shirts were oversized leg of mutton affairs in bright fuchsia. Denim and richly embroidered brocades came with exaggerated bell sleeves, and delicate floral lace was layered in contrasting pastel hues. The whole collection was an exercise in exaggeration. From the trousers that were cropped and flared, ruched up the leg, a tuxedo stripe, in the form of an OTT running it’s length, silver poppers the size of a two pence piece, to the tunic length shirts with cuffs bigger than the models hand’s that buckled round the neck in some cases, in wide stripes, giving them an almost comic prison vibe. You wouldn’t wear them in Sing Sing, but you’d possibly wear them when visiting Sing Sing. The whole collection was probably best summed up by their choice of finale song, Bikini Kill’s Rebel Girl, the wanting to take her home and try on all her clothes part. And the queen of the neighbourhood part. She is.
Photographs by Jason Lloyd-Evans
