To enter David Koma’s studio is to be swept into a flurry of anecdotes—many best left off the record—involving super yachts in Monaco, raves in Dubai, and Tuscan farmhouses teeming with the great and good of fashion in after-hours mode. Which is why it came as a surprise to hear that the starting point for his spring collection was not some jet-set playground, but the Surrey Hills in southeast England. Then again, perhaps not: even amid the calm of the countryside, the designer’s thoughts veered toward hedonism. Or, as he put it during a walkthrough, “a dark seduction,” “a dangerous fairytale,” “sirens,” “marble statues,” and “a couture festival in a mythical forest.”
Koma realized those fantasies in a lookbook starring a troupe of party girls bursting from the undergrowth in all sorts of draped evening gowns and cut-out cocktail numbers. The intention of the collection, he said, was to find a balance between his signature geometric lines and the lyricism of the natural world. So while dresses might have begun stark and strapless, or with shoulders cast wide, or with angular necklines sliced deep into the navel, each of them dissolved into long, bohemian trains of silk chiffon and satin. “There had to be a sense of ease and a freedom of movement in the clothes that felt harmonious with the surroundings,” he said. “The contrast shouldn’t be overpowering, but dramatic.” That it was: trousers so wide they read as skirts; neon peach dresses gathered up the leg with bungee cords and ruffed in ostrich feathers; acid-lime minis shredded with silk-knit fringing. “Beauty is always dangerous to me,” said Koma. “The threat is what makes it so seductive.”
Isn’t that one of nature’s fundamental laws? That the prettier something looks, the deadlier it proves? Well, Koma took that principle and ran with it. Hundreds of satin florets bloomed across waistbands like the quilled petals of a cactus dahlia; bird-of-paradise leaves—in chrome, black patent leather, and hand-embroidered organza—fronted sheer mesh bodysuits; and metallic necklines on diaphanous columns, out-out tops, and ruched minis were molded into stem-like forms. There was even a crystal corn husk necklace, which, though more farmhand than femme fatale, breathed a little wit into the collection. “We all need some fun in times like these,” Koma said, in what could have served as the caption to his 15th-anniversary dinner at London Fashion Week. “It’s all about the joy of dressing up.”
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