For her refuge, Mary Katrantzou returned to familiar territory and found inspiration in architectural interiors. “We looked at mid-century light artists like Paolo Venini, all these intricate designs, but filtered them into prints that looked like they were flowers,” Katrantzou said on Zoom from her home in Greece. Appropriately enough, the lookbook was photographed at the opulent Hotel Grande Bretagne in Athens, which has special meaning for the designer. “My grandmother was a ceramicist and lighting artist and she designed all the lighting for the hotel; So there is a beautiful play between the prints that inspired the collection and my grandmother’s work, which is now considered part of the hotel’s history.”
Katrantzou and her team took the most ornate decorations from lamps and chandeliers and turned them into prints and embellishments that emphasized the lush and sumptuous textures, with an added focus on trompe l’oeil techniques to fool the eye. Take an ultramarine silk dress topped with a floor-length cape with an all-over floral embellishment with jewels that you had to zoom in – really zoom in – to see that the jewels were in fact a print. Similarly, a kaftan-style dress had the appearance of dark teal velvet, but was actually printed on lightweight silk. A white floral and gold filigree print is reminiscent of daytime on an easy dress with draped sleeves, while the evening version “came to life” with gold embroidery on an all-over white sequin background. “We don’t do a lot of ivory or white because most of our customers expect bold colors and bold color combinations,” she explained. “When we work with tone-on-tone, this is an opportunity to be as 3D as possible with the print, so that the woman gets so much out of the print that she is not dependent on color.”
The interplay with texture and surface was also an opportunity to work with ‘exotics’ such as faux crocodile skin, which she used to great effect on a range of easy knee-length shift dresses. “We would never use exotics these days, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t beauty in their shine or patterns,” she said.
