London-based fashion designer David Koma debuted his Autumn-Winter 2024 collection at a glamorous fashion show at London Fashion Week.
Clothing comes alive in interplays between light and movement. Together, their impacts animate the architecture of a garment, activate its surface decoration and imbue it with life and emotion.
Throught the collection, Koma, who is best known for his embellished eveningwear and celebrity fans, investigates the radiation and physicality intrinsic to his work through a study of dance.
In an imaginary exchange between the late German neo-expressionist dance pioneer Pina Bausch and the contemporary Spanish action artist Candela Capitan, the collection deconstructs the dress codes of the on-duty and off-duty dancer's wardrobes through the modernist glamour of David Koma.
It materialises in a tension between minimalism and maximalism in both form and colour language. Inspired by spaces experienced at Thin Air – the lighting exhibition staged at The Beams in 2023 – the proposal considers the effects of light in both garment construction and staging.
Pina Bausch’s adaptation of real-world dress codes into dance attire, in collaboration with costume designer Marion Cito, takes shape in black and white silhouettes constructed around a body-conscious legging or a voluminous trouser.
On these minimal canvases, abstractions of the dancer’s wardrobe unfold: the justaucorps of the training uniform transform into draped tops while the ballet bustier morphs in form and become evening dresses.
The tutu transmutes in fabrication, electrifies in colour and travels around the body, shape-shifting into shrugs created from gathered chiffon, sashes and scarves crafted in marabou, cascading feathered hems and peplums, and the bursting under-plumage of mini-skirts, reminiscent of Rebecca Horn’s feathered kinetic sculptures.
Within this displacement of garments on the body, new layered silhouettes appear: skirts worn over trousers, or trousers overlaid in floor-length translucent dresses.
Candela Capitan’s tech-centric approach to movement inspires constructions that imitate a sense of digitality and invite the refraction of light.
They manifest in tailoring structured in sculptural neoprene, dresses cut from liquid jersey, and in the mercurial surfaces of leotards and sheer overlays.
Graphic expressions crafted through the very hand-spun come to life in vividly-coloured floor-length macramé silhouettes framed by chunky knitted stoles posing as shearling, or frayed tweed posing as plume.
In turn, authentic shearling appears in the erupting lining of leather biker jackets and certain skirts. In plays with illumination, garments are encrusted with rock-sized crystals set in raw metal ringlets.
Echoing the grammar of dancer’s shoes, the collection features plumed satin sling-backs, soft knee-high leather boots, and the David Koma signature silver-toed thigh-high leather boots.
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