This week I asked Ritienne Zammit a simple question. When you start to design a new collection what is for you the most important thing – To sell it ? For people to like it ? or For you to like it ? She replied that it is actually none of these – for her the most important thing is to succeed at igniting a passion in her audience. Being a designer in today’s world of social media, fast fashion and short attention span is hard. Even a celebrated designer can quickly become irrelevant if they take their eyes off the ball for even just a short while. However, I believe, that whilst focus on sales is important – after all a designer must sell something so as to survive – if that is all the designer cares about, any success will be short-lived. Passion must exist.
Ritienne’s new A/W Collection titled Je Suis is a marriage of a highly imaginative, creative brain coupled with an artistic talent that is getting more and more refined as the years pass by. The impressive thing is that whilst it is creative, imaginative and exciting it is actually highly sellable. Maybe not for highly conservative souls but for those that value originality – well this is gold. Her genius in this new collection is her prints – she’s done prints before but these are something else.
Multiple prints were used even within the same piece – often even overlaid onto each other – the effect is mesmerising. Snippets of art sit alongside quotes, different colours coexist, and all culminates in this explosion of originality. Different fabrics and cuts featured throughout – velvet, leather, cotton, a-line, tighter fits, relaxed fits – my favourites have to be the printed velvet pieces, the prints lent themselves so well to this fabric texture.
Ritienne presented both womenswear and menswear but I think I preferred the female pieces and no that’s not because I can wear them, although, that thought does generate brownie points. When it comes to the male suits and jackets, I personally would have preferred sharper tailoring but I think that the relaxed fit and straight cuts were what she wanted for this design so then it really does become a matter of opinion and preference. The male t-shirts with drawstrings though were brilliant. Well, apparently the hubby already has his shopping list ready. From my end, there were many pieces that tugged at my heart strings but my favourite piece was easy to pick – the kimono-style, floor-length, velvet dress that Amy wore – it captivated my imagination in hundreds of different ways. The tight fitting velvet dress was also amazing
The presentation was also special for want of a better word. No attention to detail was spared and she made such an effort to ensure that the audience was fully immersed into the experience and vision. The show will also be remembered as possibly the one where the models were most frightened – they needed to walk down a ramp with a sharp incline and uneven flooring and that due to the weather’s perfect timing, was also wet. Oh and they wore heels. Kudos to the models, I think I might have refused.
Cheers Ritienne for both a great collection and experience and an approaching dent to my cash balance.
All Photos by KURT PARIS
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