During last season’s runway show, Emilia Wickstead turned to her daughter and said she fancied a change. And so, this season, the designer created a collection film, shown in her usual show venue, the brand’s Sloane Street store, in collaboration with London restaurateur Jeremy King.
“It’s the ability to combine what you’ve learned and what you see that makes something special,” King says as the film begins. Wickstead admires how King curates an environment, and with the film, she wanted to explore how clothes are lived in and enjoyed in real life. (Helpfully, King’s new restaurant Simpsons on the Strand also provided snacks and martinis for those watching).
The film continues with painters finishing painting the set of multiple pastel colored rooms, and seamstresses making final touches to a peppermint strapless fit and flare gown with a delicate floral print, and tulle overlay. Then the first model, in an understated pink striped shirt and knit, starts the on-screen runway show, walking quickly between various rooms like she has somewhere to be. As the backdrop shifts from lavender to powder blue, pale green to lemon yellow, recontextualizing the colors of the clothes.
A self-confessed “old school” designer, Wickstead likes to pick a reference and stick with it. This season, her muse was 1940s American abstract expressionist artist Lenore ‘Lee’ Krasner. She was Jackson Pollock’s wife, but that is by the by, “I’m only talking about her,” Wickstead said. “I like to celebrate women who should have been talked about more.”
The collection featured Wickstead signatures, fit and flare dresses and architectural necklines, slightly reworked, to reflect Krasner’s penchant for reinvention. Several of the long dresses, in pink silk or black chiffon, had an asymmetrical bib of fabric that can be folded down or tied up, to reveal more or less décolletage. Many of the garments featured slightly frayed silk chiffon trims to give an undone feel (another nod to Krasner, who “always wanted to do something a little unraveled”). A light cotton, painterly tweed was used throughout, for skirts, trousers and dresses, for the first time in a Wickstead spring collection. It was woven with beige, pink and yellow reminiscent of Krasner’s 1956 painting Prophecy. Elsewhere, hand painted leaf and field daisy prints reflected not Krasner’s work, but her lifelong love of nature, Wickstead said.
To keep the garments light (and cool, in our increasingly hot summers), Wickstead used tweed panels on black chiffon on the front of tops and dresses, or added chiffon pleat inlays in tweed skirts or viscose dresses, for a breezier feel. She also used feathers for the first time this season, by way of a removable thick feather trim on a bias cut tweed mini-dress-cum-tunic, a statement trim on a striking yellow long-line dress, or intricate feather flowers, embroidered onto a yellow A-line minidress and a standout black gown in viscose moiret. The woven, a fun addition in black or tweed, sometimes with feather trims slightly obscuring the face, was handmade in the studio.
The fit and flare gowns, in floral or pink stripe, had pockets “for paintbrushes,” Wickstead said with a smile, probably knowing that her clientele of high society women and royals would not wear one of her creations to paint. For the more casual moments Wickstead layered oversized knits over loose fit striped cotton artist shirts, or crafted apron dresses that could hang loose or be tied to cinch the waist. “I feel like Lee might have worn this to the studio,” she said, gesturing to a pink and blue striped knit and a gray oversized gilet, with the daisy print on the pockets and the back.
By modifying necklines and waistlines, adding feather trims, and layering prints, this season Wickstead experimented with her familiar formula to provide new ways to wear her clothes. And in turn, the Emilia Wickstead customer can get plenty of mileage out of her pieces.
