To witness a designer evolve, enhance, and flourish is without doubt one of the biggest pleasures of standard present attendance. At this time Holly Fulton hit that career-narrative uplift with a set that put away a number of the infantile (albeit diverting) tics she had beforehand favored for a centered but imaginatively hovering kaleidoscope of clothes. Her inspiration was the artist Eileen Agar—a reputation shamefully new to this reviewer—who collaged repetitive patterns taken from nature.
Therefore the calligraphic ruffles on the starfish-studded opening attire that echoed the languidly spiraling tail of a seahorse. Or the injection-molded summary floral silicon appliqués and glinting Swarovski, proto–Chaos Idea myriads that danced throughout these rigorously proportioned silhouettes. Fulton’s really feel for harmonic coloration combos was in tune, and she or he paid rewarding diligence to often-overlooked classes that included an precisely exact denim and chambray part.
Beforehand, Fulton was lovable for the walk-of-shame, tousled fierceness—very London—that so typically inflected itself in her collections. In the present day that was eclipsed by unapologetic virtuosity. Backstage Fulton mentioned: “We had been attempting to make use of repetition to create cohesion that mirrored the virtually psychedelic eccentricity of Agar. My favourite quote from her is ‘I’ve loved life and it reveals by, like a clear skirt’—she mainly spent lots of her latter years being semi-naked in translucent clothes—and we tried to include that concept of one thing robust, female, and light-weight.”