A couple of weeks ago Sandra Backlund sent me some images taken from her new collection. Entitled “Pool Position”, Sandra’s Spring/Summer 09 collection features garments that look definitely lighter than her previous ones. As soon as I got her email I replied, asking where she had got the inspiration for her new designs, but, since she was away, I had to wait for a few days before getting her answer.
The mystery was solved just a couple of days ago when Sandra explained me via email that she didn’t actually know for sure where the inspiration came from, but it had something to do with "a Swedish girl in full mourning and a dark mind who spends a week in November in Miami". I found her explanation intriguing as it seemed to hide a longer story.
So let’s try to decode Sandra’s “Pool Position”. There are nine outfits in this collection, all of them in neutral shades. Colours such as black, white or grey have already been explored by Sandra in some of her previous collections, but the symbolism behind these colours – for example the black as the colour of mourning – contrasts in this case with the revealing and rather sensual designs of some of the dresses. Construction is obviously a fundamental component of fashion design and Sandra seems to have stripped down to the bare minimum (well, after all it’s a Spring/Summer collection…) her usually voluminous and imposing silhouettes.
The designer has reused the technique she explained to me over a year ago that implies knitting a lot of small pieces and then sewing them together to give her garments the impression they are complicated structures, so that a rather geometrical shoulder piece in one dress was reused to build up the skirt in another. In the past, Sandra created sumptuous woollen dresses, padding particular bits of them with wool: 
you might remember her woollen baby doll-meets-tutu dresses, the iconic headpiece from her “Don’t Walk” collection or the elaborate layers of wool that form the dress structures for her all-grey “Diamond Cut Diamond” collection. But in "Pool Position" she seems to have padded only particular parts of
her garments such as the hips, to give them more structure. This collection is definitely characterised by a studied three-dimensionality and by elaborate (though at times flatter) surfaces.
Another important starting point while Sandra was experimenting with this collection must have been the human body: the waist is reduced to a narrow point, the shoulders and hips are emphasised, while the designer crocheted bone-like structures across the chest or on the back that create intricate motifs.
Sandra seems to have used the designs in this collection not as simple ornaments for the body, but as a way to enhance the body and create a new paradigm of the female form. So, once again, well done, Sandra!
All images of Sandra Backlund’s "Pool Position" by John Scarisbrick.
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