February 17, 2020 |
It’s always a joy to see what Thea Bregazzi and Justin Thornton have been looking at for the past six months. Each season, the husband-wife design duo present us with a reading list we’re eager to indulge in comes our next holiday. For AW20, it included Don’t Look Now, a short story by Daphne du Maurier which was also adapted into a cinematic thriller starring Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland as a married couple trying to grief the loss of their child. A heavy subject for a brand that’s best known for whimsy floral dresses, but a welcomed shift indeed. Preen by Thornton Bregazzi might have become synonymous for dressing a certain kind of woman, but they’ve never just stopped at the point of their commercial success. Constantly fueled by innovation and creating avant-garde updates on their best-sellers, Bregazzi and Thornton turned to a severe vision for this season.
Boxy suits in a range of tweeds and plaids created the traditionally masculine silhouette, which at moments veered into a subversive, sexual direction, as seen in Lindsey Wixon’s red latex trench coat which was lifted straight from the film’s costume department. On the other hand, hyper-femme ruffled frocks in layers of lace and sequins appeared as haunting, mysterious figures from a dark world. Pixelated religious iconography reflected Italian setting of Venice in Don’t Look Now, peppered with that bit of British humour injected by the duo. Calling this outing sexy might miss the point of what the brand is about, but this indeed was a fresh, brazen outing for Preen.
by Jason Lloyd-Evans.
