Photos by Amanda Coen for Ecouterre
Wall Street may be experiencing more tumbles than a roomful of tots at Gymboree, but the mood at Duro Olowu's Spring/Summer 2012 show at New York Fashion Week was anything but downbeat. The U.K.-based designer had camera bulbs flashing wildly as models preened and posed in front of a stark white backdrop at Milk Studios on Saturday. Inspired by the work of photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue and the West Indian immigrants who arrived in England in the '50s—Olowu's mother among them—the collection is a visual feast of reclaimed silks and vintage fabric trims in eclectic, contrasting patterns.
OCEAN VOYAGE
The women aboard the Windrush were “impeccably dressed beacons of optimism,” Olowu tells Ecouterre, with an “elegant and sharp style which they maintained despite the harsh realities they were about to face.” Those impressions, coupled with Lartigue’s images of the “elusive and enigmatic allure of women in the French Riviera” define the collection, the designer’s second at New York Fashion Week.
The collection is a visual feast of reclaimed silks and vintage fabric trims in eclectic, contrasting patterns.
The collection is a visual feast of reclaimed silks and vintage fabric trims in eclectic, contrasting patterns.
Stylists from Tigi kept the models’ hair simple, elegant, and just ever-so-lightly mussed to ground each look. Such was the mix of sophistication and reality, optimism with practicality, all of which left us yearning for just a little more.
+ Duro Olowu
