In mid-January New York when the temperature barely reaches into the double digits, it’s hard to remember the feeling of balmy sunsets and summer dinners al fresco. Here in the city it’s dark before 5 pm and leaving work we bundle against the wind that barrels down the streets around the World Trade Center. Half a year from now, though, those long July nights will be here and Mary Katrantzou has designed her latest collection for them, finding inspiration for new prints and embroideries in fine tablecloths and napkins and colorful tableware.
A former Londoner, Katrantzou has called her native Greece home since the pandemic, but she splits her time between Athens and Florence, where Bulgari, for whom she is creative director of leather goods and accessories, is based. Thus the collection has a distinct Mediterranean flavor. The embroidered scalloped edges on the halter neckline of a sundress are of the kind you’d find on napkins starched and stacked neatly in the linen closet of a villa with a view, and the gingham checks on stretch jersey numbers could’ve been lifted from a picnic blanket, only this picnic blanket is decorated with fil coupé flowers. Elsewhere, the colorful swirling motif of other dresses was inspired by Murano glass—a fitting reference, given all the Venice Biennale dinners that will be in the offing this summer.
