Katie Eary’s Spring collection featured only collaborations. “That’s the future,” she said. Each brand partner subsequently represented a throwback to pre-millennial British street fashion: Boy London and Spliffy. Thrown together, everything that crashed the catwalk was pretty over-the-top. But the total overload was purposeful: Eary said that she is sick of the academism and seriousness with which streetwear is now treated in fashion. Fair enough. But, then again, this designer has never really shied away from the unserious.
Eary’s show notes describe a space between London’s one-time hipster haunt Camden Market and The Fifth Element, the futuristic, fabulously costumed sci-fi flick from 1997 starring an orange-maned Milla Jovovich. The women on Eary’s runway wore strappy swimwear similar to Jovovich’s character’s (there was also a cool shredded skirt in subtly printed denim). Men saw more variety; there were MA-1 jackets (the best was olive hued and had a neon-green plexi Boy pin on it), neoprene hoodies, and appealing parkas, with no shortage of electro-bright prints, concentrated especially with butterflies and beetles. The hyper-saturation and the all-over-the-place-ness won’t really land fans in a mass sense; it will however satisfy Eary lovers, as well as those of Boy London (of which there are many), and nostalgists for Spliffy.
