The Greek-born fashion designer Mary Katrantzou began her career with necklaces - her 2008 Central Saint Martins graduation collection featured them in trompe l'oeil, intended by Katrantzou toile graphic representations of necklaces too heavy and cumbersome to wear. In a volte face so typical of fashion, Katrantzou then pushed herself to create those 'impossible' neckpieces in three dimensions. For that first collection, Katrantzou's fact/fiction jewellery perfectly matched the printed graphics across block coloured wool-jersey dresses: since then, she has abstracted and elaborated the idea throughout her London Fashion Week collections.

In her own words, Katrantzou's latest A/W 2010 offering is a pastiche on eighteenth century portraiture. The term pastiche, contrary to much of it's contemporary usage - literally means a mishmash, deriving from the Italian pasticcio - a medley or hodgepodge. Katrantzou's pastiche necklace is quite literally a collage of disparate elements: sections of jewellery, architectural details, details culled from interior design and even fragments of the stereotypical gilt picture-frames. The latter is especially appropriate, as the inspiration of the entire collection was the concept of slicing up portraits by eighteenth century masters such as Nattier, Boucher and Fragonard, combining their decorative elements in unexpected combinations. If we unpick the various Rococo parts evident in Katrantzou's whole, there are references to Boulle's tortoiseshell and brass inlaid furniture, alongside the Verbeckt ormolu panelling from Versailles and any number of Baroque picture frames.

It's unconventional for a fashion designer to throw these kind of references into their work, but Katrantzou originally trained as an interior textile designer, and her mother is a decorator - it is her mother's factory, normally manufacturing furnishing goods, that manufactures these one-off necklaces. Katrantzou said of this collection that she wish to reinterpret the eighteenth century for a twenty-first century woman - the reason this necklace is interesting is that the elements that she chooses to collide within it are taken from outside of the realm of fashion. Equally interesting is the fact that areas of the decorative arts that Katrantzou looks at - architecture, porcelain, furniture, jewellery - are still in use today. As items of wealth and status they continue to have a relevance to a contemporary consumer that eighteenth century costume simply cannot have.

This necklace would attract attention at any time, but it is of particular interest now as fashion is taking another turn for the minimal, looking back to proponents of clean crisp design such as Helmut Lang and Calvin Klein. Katrantzou, on the contrary, pushes in the opposite direction towards ostentation and an extreme representation of luxury. This may seem out of kilter with the times ,but if we look back to the early nineties - specifically Vivienne Westwood, Christian Lacroix and Gianni Versace - we can see that there is a rebellious counter-current of unapologetic decoration to minimalism. Katrantzou work corresponds to that type of tradition. particularity in British design - Westwood's A/W 1990 portrait collection, where she sought to reproduce luxury listed in paintings from the seventieth and early eighteenth century, is a direct antecedent  to Katrantzou's work.

This necklace is by no means a revolution in fashion. It looks back to the Ancien Régime, but it's also part of a longer tradition of luxury, a tradition of decoration, of ostentation, of impracticality even. Models buckle under the weight of Katrantzou's necklaces, and they are not intended for production - they are statement pieces, purely for editorial and red-carpet. Perhaps it doesn't correspond to the needs of a modern's woman wardrobe but in its decorative excess, the relief it offers from the often antiseptic cleanliness of modernism is profoundly refreshing.