Fashion East: Holly Fulton, Maria Francesca Pepe, Natascha Stolle

It’s interesting to see how jewellery has reached a new vital status in the last few years. Jewels have often been used in fashion as ornaments to accessorise particular outfits, but many new designers have recently been developing jewellery lines or pieces that perfectly integrate with their clothes, as it happened with Mary Kantratzou. This is also Holly Fulton’s case.

A fashion graduate from the Edinburgh College of Art with an MA from London's Royal College of Art, Fulton has designed jewellery also at Lanvin before launching her own label.

Rather than being a starting point or a mere inspiration, jewellery is for Fulton a vital element, as she also proved during her catwalk at the Fashion East event.

Fulton showcased a collection of 14 looks that could be defined as “jewellery couture”, as it featured dresses and tops with integrated necklaces or jewellery-like details.

Her showpieces decorated with orange, black, silvery and blue Perspex plates called to mind robotic versions of the 60s iconic metal disk dresses à la Paco Rabanne, while evoking in their bold geometric patterns Art Deco atmospheres and the flowery motifs of the tiles you often find in Scottish tenements.

Applied to less extravagant and more wearable pieces such as pencil skirts and fluid blouses, Fulton’s “jewellery couture” produced equally striking outfits, such as skirts and tops with decorative printed patterns;
dresses with shoulders covered in enamel discs and skirts studded with Jean Muir navy blue, sea green and black Swarovski crystals.

Yet Fulton’s main strength is not in the silhouette of her designs, which is rather basic, but in the complicated embroidered motifs that she creates on her pieces and in the special tactile/auditive value her designs have.

Before turning to fashion Maria Francesca Pepe has in the last few years contributed to develop jewellery lines for various fashion designers, among them also Roksanda Ilincic.

Pepe launched a new concept based on what she defines as “jewellery-wear”: interchangeable clothes and jewels.

For her new collection Pepe wrapped up a sleeve of her jacket in thick metal bands, decorated with golden and bronze coloured windmills her dresses,
integrated her snake-like cylindrical necklaces in her bags or used them as ankle cuffs for her trousers and came up with lapel-like necklaces and with lapels shaped like her necklaces. There were weak points, though, in the cut and silhouettes of her dresses which will have to be improved if Pepe really wants to take to new heights her jewellery-wear.

Natascha Stolle predominantly focused on two shades, grey and black, adding occasional colourful prints on black background. Her collection featured many versatile and rather simple jersey and wool pieces that can be easily layered with different garments to create personal looks.

As a whole also this season Lulu Kennedy's Fashion East presented an interesting trio of talented designers.
I’m curious to see where the Fashion East platform will take Fulton, Pepe and Stolle, though I think this trio will need a few more years to achieve the level of perfection that some of the early Fashion East-sponsored designers such as Marios Schwab reached.