February 14, 2019 |
This season’s opulent setting of choice for Peter Pilotto is the Reform Club, located slap bang in the middle of London’s Pall Mall. Interestingly, the private members club, founded in 1836, became the first of London’s original gentlemen’s clubs to change its rules, eschewing it’s all-male membership clause to allow for the admission of women on equal terms in 1981. Its reputation is for, as its name suggests, a club for those with progressive political ideas.
Whilst the guest waited patiently in their seats, trays of drinks, nuts, olives and sandwiches (sans crusts) were served to the guests. The show spanned the upper level of the glass-topped atrium and wove round into a drawing room, where the walls were packed tightly floor to ceiling with shelves of books. The luxe fabrications practically glistened in the low lighting and appeared right at home in this grand location. Peter Pilotto and Christopher De Vos’ focus was on ‘regal opulence’, which is perhaps the most apt way to describe the collection. Their decorative décor reference point this season were via Hungarian Zsolnay hand-painted porcelain ceramics, which they explored with fabric and forms.
Whilst the marabou feathered streamed, tweeds sparkled, crystal-studded bodices twinkled and silk floral jumpsuits and hammered silk dresses flounced past, it was hard not to imagine how the club’s notable members might have perceived the collection. What would literary greats like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Henry James have thought of the jacquard pointed miles by Alan Buanne or what H.G. Wells’s take on the baroque pearl and beaded jewellery would have been?
Photographs by Jason-Lloyd Evans.
