Having just lately drawn on the anthropomorphic sculptures of Isabelle Albuquerque, David Koma this season set his sights on a unique type of shape-shifting superwoman: the Bond woman. “She’s assured, empowering, and harmful,” he mentioned throughout a preview of his pre-fall assortment in his Shoreditch studio. “Identical to the Koma woman.” Between the graphic structure of slightly black costume and the liquid sequins of an almost-transparent robe, the designer burnished—when it might have been simply as attention-grabbing to see him complicate—the femme fatale trope: a black widow weaponizing her powers of seduction with a come-hither gaze and a deadly contact.
Koma mentioned he started by setting his design group three James Bond motion pictures to look at, beginning with 1995’s GoldenEye, by which Famke Janssen performed a Soviet murderer known as Xenia Onatopp. Her stealthy stylish impressed patent, croc-embossed bodices and hip-jutting mini skirts, whereas 3D-printed enamel pebbles had been hand-embroidered onto leather-based corsets and baggage to imitate scales. The fiery purple of the character’s Ferrari seems in scorching bursts of colour all through the gathering. Elsewhere, Jill St. John’s portrayal of Tiffany Case, a glamorous jewel smuggler in 1971’s Diamonds Are Without end, gave rise to stretch leather-based skirts, trench coats, and night attire scattered in rough-hewn crystals, whereas a liberal software of fake fur was a direct reference to the mink throw below which she seduced Mr. Bond. Then there was Grace Jones’s iconic flip as Might Day in 1985’s A View To a Kill. She was the primary Bond woman to have a direct hand in her personal costumes and known as on Azzedine Alaïa to create them. No guessing the place the power-shouldered tailoring and waist-cinching biker jackets got here from—even the geometric traces on tapered skirts and uneven mini attire recalled her famously angular strikes.
Constructed from bonded satin and velvet, these explicit items had been extra light-weight than they seemed. “I like that steadiness between drama and ease,” Koma mentioned. “There must be a sense of softness even within the sharp edges.” The designer labored by way of various dichotomies of this nature. Exact tailor-made traces had been squared towards figure-hugging viscose jersey attire; boned denim bustiers towards tactile trims; robust leathers towards clusters of translucent paillettes. The masculine was additionally juxtaposed towards the ultra-femme. To wit: a double-denim look and bonnet-enveloping coat had been mirrored in Koma’s males’s line—only one web page within the designer’s still-growing enterprise portfolio. Not lengthy after seeing Koma’s pre-fall assortment, this reviewer ran into him as he was embarking at Milano Linate. He’d been on the town to place the ultimate touches on his upcoming Blumarine runway debut. “I’m typically drained,” he mentioned. “However I’m by no means careworn—and that’s a really, crucial distinction.”
