Mary Katrantzou Spring 2017 - Runway Review

There’s no fighting nature. And for Mary Katrantzou, that meant a bold return to her Greek heritage and roots for a spring collection that was visually exuberant and ripe with colorful optical patterns.

Katrantzou recalled a childhood visit to the ancient palace of Knossos, on Crete, as the starting point for this collection. The profiles of Minoan priestesses and goddesses, which appear in Cretan murals and the silhouetted paintings on Greek vases and plates, were transposed onto the bodices of dresses and, in a few examples, printed onto shimmery chain-mail tunics. The saturation of color, as splashed onto prints and patterns, battled with frescos, chariot racers and urns for valuable real estate that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Versace runway.

Set to a Prince soundtrack, Katrantzou said she was also triggered by the words of a girlfriend who happened to remark, “Your work is so psychedelic!” She’d not seen her many-layered digital compositions that way before, but it led her to search out the trippy graphics of late-’60s and early-’70s music posters. So it went: Swirly prog-rock patterns met the symbols of the ancient Greek world in flared trousers and stretch T-shirts, layered under lots of the embellished dresses that have become Katrantzou’s signature.