MBFWA 2013 REVIEW - KATE SYLVESTER

Always Sometimes Anytime and Catalogue Magazine are collaborating on MBFWA 2013 coverage. Head over here to check out Always Sometimes Anytime's updates.


- Courtney Sanders

Kate Sylvester’s summer 2013-14 collection, called ‘The Last Sitting’, was apparently inspired by the complex tragedy of Marilyn Monroe as depicted in the photograph’s of Bert Stern. The hair and make-up direction exacted this notion: blonde models – including stars of the week Julia Nobis and Holly Rose– wore side-parted, dishevelled French rolls: a classic style turned haywire. Similarly Monroe’s iconic red lips were subverted into punchy pink, a highlight hue in the collection, present in chiffon shirts and easy, ruched summer dresses, and the colour caught the attention of the thematically-appropriate lighting rig: Hollywood spots that pulsed in time to the sympathetic, Americana soundtrack.

The soundtrack, that included the likes of Little Green Cars’ ‘The John Wayne’, further suggested the depressing nature of Monroe’s broken dreams, but there was something else in there too. Kate Sylvester, as a public persona as well as a clothing designer, has always struck a delicate balance between being ladylike and a little traditional, and walking to a wilder, rock and roll beat. This was arguably Marilyn Monroe’s shtick too and thus this collection naturally became somewhat of a retrospective for Sylvester: button-up, embroidered blouses, high-waisted knickers, leather bustiers and dainty, silver necklaces are something she repeats season-on-season and were all significant inclusions tonight. The intricate emotions of both Sylvester’s character and her muse for this season creates a kind of masculine confidence in her work, thus we saw models walking with hands in the pockets of graphite pant suits and American baseball references (caps, cross-stitch seam detail), which married nicely to her ongoing obsessed with beige leather and linen.

Marilyn Monroe’s story raised – and still raises – a myriad questions around both the role of women in society, as well as challenging what – and for whom – their sexuality is for. Kate Sylvester may only be a fashion designer but, as this collection further demonstrated, she strives to design for a powerful, yet vulnerable, yet whatever-they-want-to-be customer. She is effectively arguing that women should be whoever and do whatever they want, and her summer 2013-14 collection ‘The Last Sitting’, should be celebrated – and worn with a whole lot of ‘tude - for that.