Emilia Wickstead Delivers Her Best Collection Yet

New Zealand-born designer Emilia Wickstead, who has dressed the Duchess of Cambridge and Samantha Cameron, carpeted the foyer of an unfinished office block in King’s Cross in sugar-almond pink at London Fashion Week, and according to Telegraph fashion features director Kate Finnigan it is perhaps the designer’s best collection yet.

“With walls of grey breeze blocks it was a quirky backdrop for a kooky, pretty and confident collection … [and] best because it was playful and daring while still coming across as something entirely respectable and elegant,” Finnigan writes.

“Wickstead has always had an eye for colour and fabulous fabric. She deploys the kind of textiles that the American society designer Lilly Pulitzer would have used (expensive) and they always emanate a sense of pedigree. But now Wickstead is using these fabrics with wit, having more fun with silhouette, proportion and clashing colours and prints – or chintz, to be precise.

“The last look was a long-waisted dress (pictured) in two clashing chintzes that worked brilliantly together. But the surprise was the puffy bustle-like form at the back. It was like a maternity dress in reverse and the effect was odd and historic and utterly desirable. When a designer can do that with a dress that makes you balloon in strange places you know she’s playing a strong game.”

Original article by Kate Finnigan, The Telegraph, September 19, 2015.