David Koma Fall 2012

Giovanni Boldini’s dashing portrait of the Marchesa Casati with a gleaming black greyhound was a place to begin for David Koma’s show that explored both the graphic styles of sixties minimalism and the romantic exuberance of eighteenth-century fashion.
 
For Koma, the greyhound embodies “aristocracy and pure elegance, and simultaneously it is so fast and sporty!”-the best metaphor for the gathering. The droll “ancestral” dog portraits of artist Thierry Poncelet also reflected the designer’s whimsical theme.
 
Koma’s fetish hound found itself embodied within the sculptural heels of his quirky shoes; in intarsia knits; and woven into the jacquards that he had developed with Scottish textile mills.
 
Koma stays true to his slyly vampy Thierry Mugler aesthetic and the second one-skin contours he loves (and provides a nod to Karl with those high, starched Edwardian collars), but this season that Pompadour vibe manifests itself in a flare of silk gazar on the hem of a swish dress, and a whoosh of broad-striped Mikado silk on the hip to focus attention at the peplum ruffles which are emerging as a powerful theme of the season.

Perforated techno fabrics also crest a trend, and that sixties futurist moment is captured in metal-rimmed eyelet holes puncturing a bodice and flashing a contrast color beneath the outside-and chain-links of sequins in eye-popping reflectives.