Mary Katrantzou

For her first stand-alone show,Mary Katrantzou came up with a concept so dazzling,so artful,but so elementary that it made you wonder why no one else had attempted it.She'd been looking at the highly stylized seventies photography of Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin when it occurred to her that the interiors in the pictures were just as important as the models."With this collection,I wanted to put the room on the woman,rather than the woman in the room,"Katrantzou said after the show.You could say Hussein Chalayan attempted something similar ten years ago,but his pieces were elements of a conceptual performance,while Katrantzou's were desirable clothes to be worn.The fact that they were also surreal masterpieces of the digital printer's craft only made them more seductive.

xxx,K♥