Georgia Alice winter 2014. Photos / Sam Lee
Last week Oscar de la Renta expressed his frustration at fashion's current predilection for megashows - frenzied fashion week presentations with endless guest lists and people trying to take pictures of all those people. Instead, the designer is interested in a targeted audience.
"Why have 20 million people with zero
connection to the clothes?" he asked.
I like that idea. And while intimate for Oscar de la Renta still means 350 guests (down from two 316-seat shows last season), I think it's something that some designers here could take note of. Fashion Week needs the big shows, but there also appears to be a fear of intimacy, of doing something small and truly editing the collection - and the guest list.
That's partly why last night's presentation from young designer Georgia Currie's label Georgia Alice felt so promising. It was a cool, intimate show at the stark white Hopkinson Mossman gallery, with just 50 invited and 15 looks.
The collection, for winter 2014, is called Battenberg - after her favourite childhood cake, which was referenced in the yummy pastel pink leather and creamy colours of the range. Designed mainly in Bali, it progressed with the structured shapes Currie has developed as her signature. A focus on denim showed a more wearable side to the brand, but what I noticed were the smaller details: a deliberately hyphenated logo, raw-edging, the curved cuff of a shirt.
