Mugler – Pre Spring/Summer 2016 Ready-To-Wear

It’s been a year since David Koma joined the house of Mugler, and considering the breadth of his second Resort collection—as well as the very busy sales room in which it hung—things seem to be going well. Probably because Koma has the confidence to keep designing slick, body-con wares while the majority of his peers are still drifting around the loosely ruffled, waistless 1970s. After all, there is always a market for sexy.

This season, Koma’s bottom-grazing dresses and hip-baring gowns were inspired by the op art movement. That meant swerving lines creeping down a column dress, diagonal stripes shooting left and right on a pieced-together one-shoulder number, and a deep-V blazer color-blocked in black and white and sectioned off by a sheer inset of white pearls.

While the flashes of skin—revealing a sliver of collarbone or a hunk of tummy flesh, depending on how deep the cut—nodded to youth, that sentiment was pushed up against a rather traditional color palette. Along with his favorite black and white, Koma incorporated Resort-appropriate colors like pastel yellow—whipped into a slick suit—and mint green, which gave a one-shoulder, deep-slit frock just a bit of sweetness. Many of the looks were accented with jumbo-size metal “pearls,” nicely punching up otherwise flat designs. This collection suggested that Koma is capable of making repetition dynamic.