In Her SS18 presentation, Canadian Born, British designer EDELINE LEE explores what it means to be a woman and how to dress this woman. As we have seen before, women and their strength are at the heart of Lee’s collections and this season showcasing at London Fashion Week the designer explores what it means to be a woman and how to dress this woman. . ‘I imagined Georgia O’Keeffe after her heartbreak and subsequent nervous breakdown, when she first encountered that powerful landscape and realised firstly, that she had found her place in the world and secondly, that this was what she was meant to paint for the rest of her life’. The designer explains she wanted to connect to the vulnerability and the strength at the core of every woman.
The clean cut designs that are Lee’s staple appear with the her use of twisting and knotting techniques playfully juxtaposing and exaggerating the pieces onto feminine and romantic shapes such as the signature Flou Bubble Jacquard and a new fluid Georgette Champion. The colours are blush, adobe, cerulean blue, nude, ivory and black. These are accented with delicately hand covered azure blue buttons and buckles, revealing a flash of gold metalwork behind their coverings. There is a fragile hand-smocked and embroidered story developed on cotton voile, using southwestern patterns and chain stitched sentences from O’Keeffe’s love letters such as: ‘I feel like myself… and I like it’.
Abstract shapes inspired by O’Keeffe’s series of iconic flowers were translated into pieces such as dresses and organic cotton jersey sweatshirts or tshirts, playing on proportion and form. We saw elegant tailoring accentuated with the twists, ties and knots, extremely long length sleeves (another signature detail) and pieces with standout buttons all forming into a simply beautiful collection celebrating femininity and womanhood.
