Show Report
Lourenço's grasp of tactile, multi-textured surfaces always make you want to get to grips with his garments, if only to figure out what the blasted things are crafted of.
Pedro Lourenço has a vision of the future. It's cold, it's chilly, it's pretty hard. It's your basic 'Bladerunner' update. Blade running was a handy lynchpin for his latest collection, as the shoes set the tone - shards of mirror seemingly embedded in the foot in place of a mirror, so the models seemed to be walking on a knife-edge.
That all seems like Lourenço's signature look - as much as a designer three-seasons into their career can have a signature, but Lourenço has a wicked way with a sci-fi reference and a fine hand at developing crazy, mind-boggling techno fabrics. The difference in this offering was that Lourenço made the whole thing look desirable. Forget the occasional iPad roped to the occasional wrist - these were clothes you wanted to touch. Well, Lourenço's grasp of tactile, multi-textured surfaces always make you want to get to grips with his garments, if only to figure out what the blasted things are crafted of. But quite often, wearing them is the last thing on your mind. This time, the inverse was true: we could tell exactly what they were made of - luxurious fox-fur, silk, cashmere, fine leather - and women couldn't wait to get them off the racks and on their backs.
Lourenço experimented with shapes we've seen a few times over this season, but made them his own. The belled-out backs of his coats were actually subtle, but their volume was thumped-up with wrist-deep fur so they seemed to bulge away from the body. They looked new and exciting - and as we've seen that bump-back shape in every other collection this season, that was quite a feat. His slender, leather-panelled trousers looked flattering and futuristic. His sheer tulle inserts were graphic and clever, particularly in a lurex-flecked navy tweed coat that seemed to have been sliced in half at the shoulders. That's a fashion visual trick that often falls flat, but Lourenço pulled it off with aplomb. There was no trickery in his spiral-cut dresses strapping models up in bands of black and white with flashes of lipstick red or eggy Courreges orange. They just looked brilliant, but not plain - likewise when those same colours were blocked into cocooning coats.
Why did it all seem so right? Because Lourenço seems to have picked up on the difference between art and commerce, and on the fine line very few can walk between the two when it comes to fashion. Maybe that's what those silver fragments underfoot represented - the knife's edge Lourenço challenged his talent to walk. It was a risk worth taking. This collection hit it, dead on and it was exhilarating to watch.
