Glamour Girl
Forget New York Fashion Week, daahlings, Glamour Girl is in groovy London—in spirit, anyway. London Fashion Week is going on now. I’m especially interested in the work of a young Scottish designer named Holly Fulton. Take a look at this:
It’s actually made of plexiglass (what the Brits call “perspex”) embellished with Swarovski crystals. It’s all meticulously laser-cut and then sewn—yes, sewn, by hand—together. I don’t know how she does it, but I’m bowled over by the results. The color, the pattern, the boldness—gobsmacking. Here are two skirts:
Holly Fulton recently won the Scottish Young Designer of the Year Award, and this week she’s showing her first professional collection in London, specifically during the segment that’s become the hottest ticket of the show, Fashion East, which promotes the best young UK talent. She also designs jewelry, which, she says in this interview, is being sold at Browns in London and Debut NY in New York. As for her clothes, you can go directly to her website, hollyfulton.com. (Sorry, no indication of how much these beauties cost.)
So much has been done and repeated in fashion, it’s hard to come up with something truly new and innovative. But Fulton has. When I first saw her clothes, I thought “high-tech meets Gustav Klimt.” But that’s not quite right. Fulton says she gets her inspiration from the geometry of 1930s Art Deco, from robotics, and from a celebrated Scottish sculptor named Eduardo Paolozzi. I’d never heard of Paolozzi before and looked him up, discovering that he designed some dazzling sculptures, pop posters, and even tube station mosaics. His works are in museums all over the world, including the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, where this ‘50s Atomic frock is a perfect emblem of its age:
All proving, once again, that in addition to beauty, fashion helps us learn something new every day.
(I’m going to ask Fulton how much for one of her creations—fingers crossed that the price won’t bowl me over the way her designs do. If you find out first, leave it in the Comments. Or maybe we’ll run into each other in town, both sporting an original perspex something-or-other!)
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 09/18/09 at 06:34 AM
