Louise Amstrup SS10 – seven years good luck?

Danish born, London based designer Louise Amstrup graduated from Akademie Modedesign in 2003 and trained with Alexander McQueen, Sophia Kokosalaki and Jonathan Saunders before launching her own label in 2006. She made her SS10 presentation yesterday at Vauxhall Fashion Scout.

A combination of mannequins and a model line-up, the presentation was staged against a wall of mirrors some pure relfection, others distorted. Visual trickery and shattered mirrors were something that ran through the entire collection. I had a chance to catch-up with the designer who kindly talked me through the key pieces pointing out the noteworthy elements.

Her eclectic use of fabric was most interesting. Futurism and the use of sci-fi fabrics is an undercurrent I’ve picked up on during fashion week. I encountered high vis fabrications when I reported on Rachel Freire last week and Louise Amstrup is another designer making use of a fabric normally confined to workwear and cyclists. She’s also used neo-prene, the fabric used in wetsuits. These fabrics add high-notes to a collection grounded in jersey, silk and print.

Despite her unorthodox use of fabric, the collection is very wearable and has far reaching appeal. She achieves an equilibrium between the strong shapes created by angular jersery, neoprene and relfective fabrics and the softer, more feminine draped plain and printed silk elements.

There was a strong synergy between the various elements of the collection, the play on light making it’s way onto prints too. The digital prints were based on several exposures creating layers built up by motifs such as shattered glass, fishnet tights. The smokey grey colour palette added a somewhat whimisical element to the collection.

I’ve smashed my way through several mirrors this year including the one on my Balenciaga bag and all it’s brought me is good luck, I’ve a similar feeling the same’s going to happen for this collection.

Yesterday was my blogging day and I think I’ve enough content to last until Christmas. More reports and video footage to follows.

Today Im back with my buying hat on, a fur-covered 1940’s jockey number.

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