A few years ago we celebrated in a dedicated post dancer Loïe Fuller, a theatre actress who worked in burlesque and vaudeville shows.
Born in 1862, Fuller became the creator of the iconic "Serpentine Dance", filmed in 1896 by Auguste and Louis Lumière.
The dance consisted in a series of sinuous weaving and spiralling movements that Fuller choreographed while wearing a gown made with a translucent Chinese silk fabric.
While dancing in front of a mirror, Fuller had realised that the fabric produced wonderful golden reflections and effects when hit by the sun and she developed from there a unique dance in which she designed in the air different shapes - from flowers to butterflies (a figure that inspired further dancers and directors) and flames.
The shapes were peculiar since, when the light hit the fabric, the latter gave the impressions of changing nuances, passing from orange to pale blue, from green to yellow.
As the years passed, Fuller became a pioneer of theatrical lighting techniques and held patents for chemical compounds to create colour gel and use chemical salts for luminescent lighting and garments.
Fuller became a fashion inspiration in recent years especially for videos in connection with fashion: as you may remember from a previous post, Mel Bles shot an advert for Missoni's Autumn 2011 collection that moved from Loïe Fuller and Martha Graham, while last year Stéphanie Di Giusto's La danseuse, a film about Fuller's life and art was presented at the Cannes Film Festival.
Fuller's fantastically coloured phosphorescent swaths of silk attached to a pair of hand-held wands have turned again into an inspiration for a fashion collection.
For Delpozo's Resort 2018 collection creative director Josep Font moved indeed from two main ideas - the dance costumes of Loïe Fuller and the colourful reflections of lake Clicos in Lanzarote, with its lime green surrounded by dark volcanic sand, lake Hillier in Australia, with its bubble gum pinks, and lake Tuz Gölu in Turkey, with its high saline concentration (the collection is indeed entitled "Chromatic Lakes"). Leaving behind classic ballerinas to turn to Fuller, Font got the chance to play around with different nuances in an interesting way.
Font started with a rather classic palette of navy, pale blue, chocolate and ivory, but literally broke these colours, adding elements in lime green or neon orange.
The knitwear offer was particularly desirable with classic cable knit sweaters in navy blue or ivory with sprinkles of neon green sequins that seemed to sprout and explode from within. Font also included a lace effect knit with geometrical embroideries.
The nautical touch introduced by the thick sweaters, the Breton stripes in organza and the embroideries replicating salt flowers, made sure the Resort 18 designs seemed more wearable than the creations from the S/S 17 collection.
Fuller was evoked not just by the tulle evening gowns in nude mixed with liquid neon colours or the silver dresses with appliqued iridescent flowers, but also by the volumes.
When the dancer moved she created shapes with her billowing gown and Font tried to do the same, with one main difference: being also an architect he tended to freeze a specific shape combining it with the shapes of a specific lake, creating strong sculptural and flattering silhouettes with a twist of theatricality.
From the simple sleeveless dresses with a full-skirt or long gowns with a ridged arch around the skirt or the breast area to the cocooning cropped tops with oval openings along the arms (the new arch-side openings were also applied to pants); from the shirts with perfectly cut leg 'o mutton puffed sleeves to the slim capes or the gonflé effects in the bloomers inspired trousers, Font designed precise silhouettes in a masterly way.
A final mention goes to the accessories - the Bow ballerina, in patent and satin, and the mini Bow clutch, that comes in nine different colours (and is made from 36 pieces, 22 being of leather).
Maybe in future we will be able to automatically switch and alter the colours of the garments we are wearing thanks to some embedded technology (we're almost there...), but, for the time being, Font subtle variations of colours will definitely do the trick.
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