For resort, Mary Katrantzou went back to familiar territory, finding inspiration in architectural interiors. “We were looking at mid-century light artists like Paolo Venini, at all these intricate designs but filtering them into prints that looked like they’re florals,” Katrantzou said on a Zoom from her home in Greece. Fittingly, the lookbook was photographed in the opulent Hotel Grande Bretagne in Athens, which has a special meaning for the designer. “My grandmother was a ceramicist and a lighting artist and she designed all the lighting for the hotel; so there’s a nice play between the prints that inspired the collection and the work of my grandmother, which is now considered part of the history of the hotel.”
Katrantzou and her team extracted the most ornate decorations of lamps and chandeliers and turned them into prints and embellishments that emphasized the opulent and lush textures, with an added focus on trompe l’oeil techniques to fool the eye. Take an ultramarine silk gown with an attached floor-length cape featuring an all-over jeweled floral embellishment that one had to zoom in on—like, really zoom in—to see that the jewels were in fact a print. Similarly, a caftan-style gown had the look of dark teal velvet, but was in fact printed on a lightweight silk. A white floral and gold filigree print read as daytime on an easy dress with draped sleeves, while its evening counterpart “came alive” with gold embroidery on an all-over white sequin background. “We don’t do a lot of ivory or white because most of our clients expect audacious color and bold color combinations,” she explained. “When we work with tone-on-tone it’s an opportunity to be as 3D as possible with the print, so that the woman is getting so much from the print she doesn’t have to rely on color.”
The interplay with texture and surface was also a chance to work with “exotics” like mock croc skin, which she used to great effect on a series of easy knee-length shift dresses. “We would never use exotics in this day and age, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t beauty in the shine or in the patternation of it,” she said.