PFW Show Report: Sophia Kokosalaki

When a Sophia Kokosalaki collection is really good and right it's the clothes that tell you; you can spot from ten paces that it's a Kokosalaki without needing to look in the label. The way she drapes, loops, and tucks her signature gauzy pale-hued summer fabrics is as unique to her as her fingerprint. And when she's on a tucking and draping mission with some tulle, soft cotton mesh, gauzy crunched up silk and supple kid leather she really can't be bettered. And so it was this weekend when Sophia, a Londoner transplanted from her native Greece, presented a collection that was mostly as light and airy as a breeze filled sail fluttering above the Aegean. But the clothes weren't for that fleeting moment of freedom you have on holiday, they were for modern urban women living a life. Skirts were short and folded back up on themselves like deflated puffballs. A short pale grey cocktail dress with mesh draping artfully falling from the shoulders was elegant dishevelment. A leather jacket came in ballerina pink and styled like a corset, and there was some visible bra action going on under silken blouses. All worn with a high heel version of Greek folk dancing shoes. But most of all it was about that short puffball, a cinched waist and those drapy tops. "I actually went straight in on my Greek heritage this time, looking at folk dancers," said Sophia post-show, "so the cuts and shapes of their costume is very obviously there, but all I thinking about with the clothes is what the modern 21st century woman wants to wear in her life."

- Melanie Rickey in Paris

05 October 2009 at 09:58