The spontaneous hand-drawn fantastic thing about Steve O Smith’s work must be seen to be believed. Over London Style Week, passersby at Dover Avenue Market stopped lifeless to marvel on the inside-and-out perfectionism of some items of his spring assortment hanging on a rail. It was like taking a look at 3D black-and-white freehand life drawings caught in air.
There have been worth tags, sure, however this was the other of a see-now-buy-now state of affairs. Smith is the newest to emerge within the vanguard of younger London designers who’re making issues to order, as do Michael Stewart and Richard Quinn.
The thrill round Smith exploded on the Met Ball in Could, when Eddie Redmayne and his spouse, Hannah Bagshawe, wore items he’d made for them from the look guide he posted final season. “That have actually pushed my methods, determining how all the things should look in 360 levels, from each angle,” Smith mentioned. “Afterwards, I went house to London and drew for 3 weeks straight.”
His second assortment flowed from the graphic inspiration he’d gleaned from learning the work of the Weimar Republic artist George Grosz. Immersed within the free and decadent tradition of Berlin within the Twenties and ’30s, he hit on Pandora’s Field, the silent film by G.W. Pabst that made the provocative Louise Brooks right into a wild sensation of the flapper period.
What captivated Smith was “her expressiveness, vulnerability, and kinetic vitality,” he mentioned. “At the moment, audiences had been shocked by confronting her motion onscreen.” Dozens of pace drawings later, he transferred the sketches he preferred greatest onto black appliqués operating over calico or organza. As minutely painstaking as his method is—tiny stitching, delicate end—the vitality of his artist’s hand vibes over all the things from tailoring to menswear to the breathtaking lightness of his one-shoulder night robe (a “gesture gown,” he referred to as it).
Smith’s Lulu assortment landed someplace adjoining to the Twenties-ish interval that different designers are pondering round this season. And but once more, its freshness and originality couldn’t be extra alive. Smith is off to Paris to take orders in a showroom he’s rented to point out his assortment to shoppers. “It’s actually fascinating and rewarding, talking to individuals who have the persistence to order and wait,” Smith mentioned. “That’s how I need to work—to construct a contemporary atelier.”
