Prints Article

Posted on: 08.12.2010

An extract from an article in AnOther magazine by Harriet Walker www.anothermag.com

Illustrations by Zoe Taylor www.zoetaylor.co.uk

Despite their chintzy reputation, prints are far from an outdated choice. For spring/summer 2011, designers displayed visual wit and wickedness through graphic etchings, manipulated digitalism and animal renderings across all types of clothing

There’s something independent and outspoken about adding a graphic dimension to a garment, especially after so many seasons of neo-Gothicism and quiet, minimal luxury. Fashion this season is about wearing your heart on your sleeve, quite literally in the case of Miu Miu’s Day-Glo resort show, which featured flippy neon hearts on trousers and shell tops. The spring collection took things even further with dynamite bangs warping into prisms, flowers, and even hexagonal splodges.

And when Miuccia Prada decides the time is right for prints, she does them wholesale across both her collections. After last spring’s tailored pieces, which featured a mimeographed beach scene splashed across shorts, blouses and shift dresses, came brash baroque curlicues printed onto cotton separates, and raucous, heart-squeezingly naïve banana prints, which decorated boxy, mannish shirts.

Christopher Kane’s prints came after a host of neon lace separates in his spring/summer show, and they felt almost like a microscopic glimpse right into the very weft and weave of the fabric. Indistinct and yet hyperreal, they seemed to indiscriminately merge engorged spots with psychedelic floral swirls, the animal with the anatomical.