Erm, let’s take a moment to ogle at Marios Schwab… !
I love my pastel colours, hence the gushing over the sherbetty palette dished out at the London Fashion Week (actually, New York Fashion Week before it, too). But, I felt, Spring/Summer 2012 was heading towards the cloying territory with all these delightful confections… Until Marios Schwab gave it a dark, but thoroughly compelling, turn. Like Erdem, he, too, attempted to play a game of hide and seek with the body-conscious, svelte silhouette ‒ but, by dabbling with chiaroscuro, the interplay between light and dark.
For day-wear, he artfully tweaked the classic sun dress with lattice paneling. Far from looking athletic, the mesh inserts ‒ on white, black, lilac and nude coloured dresses with cinched-in waists and at-the-knee hems – were subtly provocative: revealing and yet concealing the skin beneath.
But the most seductive manifestations of sartorial chiaroscuro came in the form of simple pencil-skirted cocktail dresses in red, mint, aquamarine and nude veiled in film after film of black stretch tulle. Shadows cast by the outer gauze on the under dresses gave off an alluring shimmer, but also radiated an erotic charge, remarkably without any overt focus on flesh.
His final look of a draped floor-length gown in glossy black tulle over a Swarovski crystal-embellished bodice gave a wonderful effect of trying to fight for the light’s attention.
I loved that he kept the accessories as stark as possible to not distract from the optical trickery that was at play on the dresses.
Mesh and sheer fabrics took on a whole new charm in this exquisite collection, showing them as tools to inject some intrigue and nuance into one’s spring/summer wardrobe and beyond…