September 20, 2022 |
Talk about making waves. That was the sentiment fashion folks were left with after David Koma’s tremendous SS23 show. The collection catwalk took place in a gasoline-stained Shoreditch courtyard a stone’s throw from Koma’s studio. The same space once played backdrop to the work of William Shakespeare back in 1576 if you can believe it, making this twenty-first century display somehow feel like a serendipitous full-circle moment of sorts.
Promoting the power of a confident woman on the streets of the Theatre Courtyard Gallery, Koma felt inspired by the historical value of the open-air space, and the creative displays that once occurred in the streets we tend to take for granted. From the everyday accidental and environmental beauties that exist there – the natural and the cultural – his imagination was moved to reinterpret the oily, iridescent colour formations of petrol on the pavement, triggering holographic gas-inspired prints. These appeared as asymmetrical second-skin tops and dresses in silk-stretch mesh. There were also Yves Klein Blue windbreakers and macramé pieces inspired by fisherman’s knots with fish hook chainmail.
Meanwhile, subaquatic marvels were manifested as gold and silver deep-sea shells, oysters, octopus tentacles and starfish as if they were lost treasure, illuminated by the crystalised shimmer of bioluminescent creatures that live there.
The sporty treatments of Koma’s SS22 and PF22 collections crash into each other bringing cool structured motorsport jackets and scuba suits with nods to pictures of Dr Sylvia Earle and her Tektite II team – the first all-female divers to spend fourteen days underwater in 1970 – into the new season.
Photography courtesy of David Koma.
