Giant lipsticks, tiny hearts, and perfume-bottle motifs were what the designer Manish Arora dreamt up for his spring/ summer 2014 women’s ready-to-wear collection, which showed in Paris on Thursday.
Dubbed “Josephine Baker goes raving,” the fun aesthetic combined sportswear with the Charleston, in flapper silhouettes with chained tassels, in comfy jersey in banana yellow or sherbet pink, and drew on club-kid culture as well.
The motifs were a reminder of what changed for women in the 1920s. “This was when women gained their freedom, got keys to the house, could go flying, and wear lipstick,” Arora told The Daily Beast backstage.
Models walked with headpieces sculpted from 1920s-style bird feathers, wearing high-heeled shoes with fluorescent pink soles, attached to Art Deco-style jewels strapped across the feet for Arora’s new shoe line.
Fluorescent bangles with fruit motifs, inspired by Baker's famous banana, and flapper tassels made in pink and gold chains, added to the lavish decorative effect, and the rich ornamentation found in both printed patterns and sequins -- done in poppy, psychedelic colors, or rich reds and ambers – felt inspired by an old Indian palace.
Club kid culture could be seen in cute backpacks worn with decorative flapper-inspired frocks, and in an acid version of the bejeweled ornamentation one might find on an Indian bride or an elephant, decorated for a Maharaja’s procession, but found here in rich prints of the collection’s motifs on hoodies or sports jackets.
Prints ranged from rich and India-meets-Psychedelic to modern and Art Deco, rendered in abstract circular, swirling prints.
