Lifestyle // Women's
How It’s Made: Mary Katrantzou
Printing money is exactly what London-based designer Mary Katrantzou was banking on for her Spring 2013 Collection. Specifically, foreign currency notes and postage stamps. The Athens-born Central Saint Martins grad has become known for her trompe l’oeil designs realized as intricately detailed digital prints. In her 2008 graduating collection, Katrantzou used imagery of oversize jewelry on jersey-bonded dresses. Since then, perfume bottles, paintings of 18th-century society, interiors, and fields of luridly vivid flowers have all come to life as part of her computer-meets-textile art. Katrantzou expresses her latest motifs—squared-off, graphic postal imprints paired with more curvaceous money markings—in straightforward digital prints applied to bold architectural shapes. She chose the theme for its symbolism—as a form of exchange, symbol of wealth, and passport to exotic cultures. Here, the backstory on one of our favorite Katrantzou looks for spring.
The Fabric
Katrantzou selected each color of the individual yarns used in the exclusive jacquard. The cloth was designed by her in-house print and textile teams, then woven in southwest France. The jacquard fabric is full-bodied and substantial, which makes it ideal for strong, clean silhouettes such as the “Desco Dino” top.
The Artwork
The artwork’s fine repetitive detailing is based on guilloche, a complex, intricate engraving technique.
The Details
Katrantzou and her team developed their own technique to render the Swarovski crystal meshjacquard combination of the “Lella” skirt—the first time this method has ever been used on fabric. It takes more than an hour to weave a single meter of the jacquard, and because of the unusual nature of the material, it requires expert skill and accuracy to piece together by hand.
—Stacy Girard
