photography by shaniqwa jarvis
report by david hayes
Some designers just know when they are on to a good thing. Lace has been a stellar seller for Erdem, so it made perfect sense for him to mix his springtime floral prints with lashings of the stuff – in real and print form, on everything from dresses to shoes, hats and even gloves – for next season. “I was inspired by underwear and petticoats and wanted to use lingerie lace for dresses,” he said after his pretty ‘Sunday best’ outing yesterday. “It was all about what is seen and not seen. I wanted dresses that looked as if the models were naked but with patches of lace appliqued on to the body.”
What started out as a peep-show thrill this winter is becoming a carry-on trend with some substance for next summer.
“We are very excited about the Swiss lace,” said Peter Pilotto, backstage with partner Christopher De Vos after their standout show. “The lace design is appliquéd on to fabric, then the fabric is somehow melted away. It’s the collage effect that we love; we worked the lace design like print in the collection.”
Lace also turned up earlier in the week at Clements Ribeiro. “It was all about the mix of trompe l’oeil-print lace and heavier real lace,” said Inacio Ribeiro. And sometimes even if you didn’t recognise a fabric as lace, it most probably was. When asked about the mesh dresses that opened his show, Marios Schwab was quick to put things right: “It was all lace,” he said with a conviction you wouldn’t want to argue with.
