Trompe l’oeil prints featuring huger-than-life renderings of geometric jewelry elements propelled Mary Katrantzou onto the world stage straight out of her graduation show at London’s Central Saint Martins fashion textiles course in 2008. She sold prints to Bill Blass while she was still a student, and she won support from the British Fashion Council’s NewGen program, enabling her to develop six seasons of graphically complex ready-to-wear collections. Moving beyond her initial focus of mapping captivating surfaces onto strong silhouettes, Katrantzou is now exploring a heady, almost Victorian mix of pleats, folds, embossing, and embroidery. Her modernist attention to shape and structure is colliding in new ways with her ongoing fascination with intricate pattern and optical opulence.
