REVIEW: FASHFEST 2016 | INK & LEATHERS

Source: Ink & Leathers

"I was incredibly excited to see that Suzan Dlouhy would be returning her label SZN to the Fashfest runway this year. As a label SZN is known to many as avant garde styling and a foundation of sustainable design principals, with a focus on simplicity and craftsmanship. SZN produces beautiful, intelligent pieces for a contemporary audience.

Closing out the first show of Saturday night, Spectra, SZN showed a concise collection of unisex looks for Spring/Summer.

The collection utilised almost origami-like construction, with each garment made from a 150cm square piece of fabric. This obviously poses the designer with a variety of challenges, and as a result stimulates the creation of new and interesting tailoring and draping. Constraint has often been utilised by designers in order to stimulate inspiration, and it was clearly successful in this collection.

Dlouhy herself described the collection as not being traditional menswear, or womenswear for that matter, and stated that it was for the more experimental dressers amongst us

A part of me agrees with this assessment, and that is the part of me that never saw himself wanting to own or even wear a chambray jumpsuit. Now it’s all I can bloody think about, and quite near the top of my post-Fashfest shopping list. I’m already thinking of the potential ways that I could style it for the office and get away with it….

The collection remained true to Dlouhy’s previous designs with featured sustainable textiles such as hemp and organic cotton in ivory, black and chambray. These fabrics are not only environmentally sound, but also incredibly hard-wearing and given to developing character with use. Further, the colours and fabrics used in this collection perfectly align with the requirement ofthe design of each garment to be gender and size flexible."