Amsterdam Fashion Week: Dorhout Mees, elegant and raw

Amsterdam Fashion Week: Dorhout Mees, elegant and raw

Jan 30, 2014 |  by  |  Fashion
About the author
Born and raised in Amsterdam, lives to dance and dances to live on electronic music, has a small vinyl addiction, appreciates a little sarcasm now and then, thinks musicals are annoying and loves those moments where you lose track of time completely.

Normally I write about music but for Amsterdam Fashion Week I’m more than happy to make an exception. The models and especially the audience are a perfect excuse to let my voyeuristic side out. My first show this week was Passage from Esther Dorhout Mees and was presented by L’Oréal (thanks for the goodie bag). I was definitely impressed.

The show started with a big screen with beautiful and intriguing images of models with gold eyebrows wearing Dorhout Mees’ creations in a forest. Some parts of the photos were moving as if they were alive, like Harry Potter pictures (excuse my nerd), which made me think of the last America’s Next Top Model cycle (excuse my secret love for bad television shows).

Wood

Her previous collection was inspired by an 1800 poetry album and has a sweet and lovely spring vibe to it. This show was a little bit darker. The forest theme continued with belts and shoes that looked like bark which isn’t surprising if you know that her collection is inspired by wood. Sounds of thunder and rain, accompanied by harp music or a hard bass, gave the show both a lovely and intense vibe, which matched the collection perfectly.

Dorhout Mees somehow managed to create a collection that is elegant and classy but also raw and edgy at the same time.

Dorhout Mees is a pro when it comes to playing with different shapes and fabrics to create interesting constructions that could easily be called little pieces of art. Where her last collection had a lot of symmetrical triangular forms, this collection was full of asymmetrical creations with organic forms and contrasting hard contours. The few mustard gold pieces were not for me, simply because I detest that colour (sorry Esther). However, I was impressed by her subtle use of transparent fabric that made some of her pieces incredibly sexy in a classy way. When you realize that her collection is about women showing vulnerability in their strength, everything falls into place.

Photography by Nina Albada Jelgersma.

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