David Koma London Fashion Week S/S 2013

Who said that tennis dresses can’t be sexy? London-settled fashion designer David Koma seems to have had a peculiar goal in mind for his own spring/summer collection: contradict this pre-concept. Looking at the new collection shown in the ’13 London Fashion Week, it is quite hard not to notice how massive and frequent is the reference to this sporty garment: Koma gives us a brand new vision of it, a modern reinterpretation with a very feminine touch given by soft and girly skirts, which are able to transform an item relegated to the androgynous world of fitness to a super fashionable and glamorous cloth. A brand new conversion.

If nets, complemented with some smart transparencies, play their leading role of further reference to the tennis universe, and are the perfect complement to simple patterns and shapes of some clothes, there’s no specific protagonist color. The fashion show seems divided in two opposite parts: the first is extremely light, with white as prevailing tonality, just alternated with bright blue color, as well as orange, fifties-like motives. Even if nets are frequently used as ornaments, together with very modern cuts applied on clothes to define a specific sinuous but also tonic shape of the feminine body, the overall look of each item is not too futuristic: a pleasant balance between innovative materials and more traditional colors of fabric is always maintained, which is quite a pleasure for the eye.

The second part of the show seems to be a sharp opposition against the first one: black dominates the scene, with nets acting always as supporter, smartly coupled with very intense green, hyper light blue and, sometimes, even some traces of white.
Geometry is the rule of this collection: even if skirts are morbid and in some way sumptuous, a maniacal precision is aimed at keeping a constant balance among the strong color oppositions, transparencies, nets. Materials are well studied to give every single cloth a modern, sculptural appeal: from patent leather, engineered in thick jersey and silk, to lace well mixed up with nets. The final result of this experimentation is a deep conversion of the sporty tennis dress, which is given a super sexy look thanks to transparencies.
What really dominates is the contrast of styles, all put together with an appealing approach that leads to absolute equilibrium among opposites. Contrast that seems to be deemed to be duplicated: as a matter of fact, if original tennis dresses were suitable for tennis courts and country clubs, now their fashionable re-elaborations are thought to be used…on the dancefloor.