Bibhu Mohapatra S/S10
Thursday, September 17th, 2009
Every now and then, whilst going through the images of fashion shows for style.com, I stumble across a designer I’ve somehow never looked at before that makes me do one of those big-gaspy breaths because they’re so darned fabulous. Bibhu Mohapatra, showing for his second season after seven years at J. Mendel, was my most recent cause of breathiness after he created a collection based around the x-rays he had to undergo in order to qualify for a green card. The clothes are designed to explore the subject of visibility, which goes some way to explaining the disordered layering with colours and fabrics - my personal favourite, the orange dress shown below, is probably the best example of this, panels of pleated tangerine jostle for space and visibility with a printed fabric, turning what would otherwise be a simple well-cut dress into a design masterpiece. I loved almost everything in this collection, and whittling the images down to a few was a massive undertaking, but I eventually settled on the ones that I thought gave the best overall feel of Mohapatra’s intentions. My favourite element was the way he had kept the lines and cuts simple, but created extraordinary pieces through use of fabric and detail - an asymmetric hem here, a boxy jacket there, it all adds up to a wonderfully wearable yet covetable collection.
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I love the orange dress! Such amazing craftsmanship.