September 20, 2025 |
Daniel W. Fletcher’s second season heading up Chinese label Mithridate was a clever mash-up of disparate reference points. Held inside the Royal Opera House, he mapped a cross-pollination of inner city revelry (circa London in the Eighties) with dress codes pulled from the Sloane Ranger handbook and some countryside sports gear thrown into the mix. On paper it sounds like a lot, but it worked. To the driving guitar of Stevie Nicks’ Edge of Seventeen, out came puffball skirts, rugby polos and mock-croc car coats. There were also school boy blazers and both knickers and slip dresses that dripped in maroon-coloured sequins.
There were many interesting design ideas here, like Harrington jackets elongated to mini-dress proportions with a belt attached to the hem, or floral jacquard short shorts and dresses that resembled that sort of wallpaper that would make up the carpet in a grand stately home. While these pieces may have found their inspiration in the upper echelons of the past, they’re firmly rooted in dressing the now.
Photography courtesy of Mithridate.
