FLASHES IN THE NIGHT
The night is dark. But all nights everywhere are always lit up by something - the moon, stars, city lights, the heat of a fire, a passing car or a flash in a clearing.
For Autumn-Winter 2004-05, O.titude proposes the colours of the night contaminated by light.
Matt black, hematite, old silver and sanded grey make up the background painting for what are almost violent chromatic patches.
Telematic arrows swirlingly fill jersey and tulle dresses stratified with hand-made decorations made micro-paillettes in fuchsia, sugar-almond pink and purple, “stained” with metal dust “finished garment” printing techniques.
Uncoordinated strands of wool, braid, petersham and lamé ribbons imprison clothes made of “black and white” wildernesses, wallpaper with garish flowers, and nocturnal shadows of hands and bodies in stretch satin animated by unexpected soleil smocking.
As in all its collections, O.titude has fun by citing references:
it cites “the optical” on rigid sheath dresses with double sleeves, and on viscose dresses draped and dazzled with embroidered lamé “patches” … then there is insolent scrawl on top to state the end.
It also cites “The Cockettes” - the late sixties San Francisco gay cultural movement and veritable precursors of the “drug queens”, dedicating to them creations in which the sacred and the profane combine in a sparkle of feathers, ribbons, old flowers and both naive and nostalgic inscriptions extolling free love…
…We're in another era - “Me? No sex, thank you.”