A photo of the designer and writer Pauline de Rothschild in her bedroom, with its hand-painted chinoiserie panels of flowering plants and trees, was Mary Katrantzou’s starting point for autumn. “This season,” she said, “I’ve really been looking at this connection between interior and exterior” – hence Rothschild’s “trompe l’oeil conservatory” and other dresses with ceiling moldings from an Italian palazzo and formal gardens of the kind you see at Versailles.
Trompe l’oeil motifs are a long-standing signature of Katrantzou, and some of her followers may experience déjà vu as they scroll through this lookbook. That’s completely intentional. “We always reintroduce a print from our archive. If you have been in the game for 15 years; they’re almost vintage,” she said, laughing.
Recently appointed creative director of leather goods and accessories at Bvlgari, Katrantzou also designed the dresses worn by the performers at the Olympic flame-transfer ceremony at the Temple of Hera in Greece earlier this year. The dresses had their own trompe l’oeil details in the form of black and white Doric columns, like relics from ancient Olympia. “The idea was to take inspiration from the environment itself and play on the idea that on the Acropolis the actual columns are women. They are symbols of women’s strength.” She reported that she had received some customer requests for special orders, but had to decline them. “We had to explain that they were a gift to the Olympic Committee and also to Greece.”
Here the motifs are more subdued and traditionally feminine. The silhouettes are also often simple: tried and tested rather than experimental. This can be seen in a flowing kaftan and a fitted midi tank dress with embroidery. That is wisdom that comes from experience; a striking print makes extreme shapes unnecessary. Indeed, it may be something she learned from that favorite photo of Rothschild’s bedroom, which is mostly spare except for those detailed chinoiserie panels.