Relaxnews caught up with designer Esther Louise Dorhout Mees before her show on October 2 to find out more about her collection. As well as outlining her latest creations and inspirations for the season, the designer expounded on the “see now, buy now” revolution that’s shaking up the industry.
What’s the womenswear silhouette for the spring/summer 2017 season?
It is a combination of sleek silhouettes, very organic and full of movement combined with structural architectural shapes.
What or who inspired this spring/summer 2017 collection?
The striking of lightning in a human being, and what that then looks like. When you survive this blast of electricity moving through the human body it leaves these unbelievable scars on the skin. They are so dark on the one side, but beautiful at the same time… almost delicate… and so different from each other each time. It is where the electricity moved through matter and found the path of least resistance. So that inspired me to look more closely at the marks and scars on the skin and the movement of light, heat and electricity through matter and what effect it has on that material.
Who is the collection aimed at? What style of woman?
I always create for the same woman. It’s not about how old she is, or where she comes from… I am not interested in that. I want to create for a woman who has a certain mindset in life. Goal-oriented, focused on making them come true. Whatever they may be. And I love her to be unapologetic about that. In a very natural way she uses fashion as a part of expressing who she is, and what she feels like that day. I love being a part of that and making her feel more empowered to do whatever she is doing that day.
Today’s womenswear silhouettes are free from all constraints, with no taboos when it comes to clothes. Is it still possible to revolutionize fashion in 2017?
I think it depends on what we think revolutionize means. It is no longer about breaking free from corsets, or the height of a woman’s skirt… luckily we’ve done that by now. But of course fashion is a question and answer to whatever is going on in our cultures and minds at the time, so it will always, for instance, question, shock, underline or elevate. And whatever it is that we might find shocking, new, fresh or revolutionary is always something that is in motion as well by the way.
With “see now buy now” and the merging of menswear and womenswear collections, the face of fashion is changing. How do you see the future?
I feel that it is changing, which is a good thing. But I think it is … sort of in between what was and what might be… I think it is searching, questioning, holding on, on the one hand, and pushing against and trying out different things on the other, like puberty in a way. I don’t know where it will lead, which is the interesting thing about it. But that is what fashion should be in my eyes: moving and changing.
