Dusted Rose Designs S/S 2010

What do you get when you cross a Japanese Harijuku girl with Marie Antoinette and place her in the Secret Garden?

Well, you get the latest collection from Dusted Rose Designs created by Holly Irwin. Irwin was able to create pieces from two very different lands (Japan and Europe) and two very different eras (Victorian and contemporary). This designer’s hybrid experiment proved to be quite an extravagant display of risk taking.

Every dress was unique and each element of clothing was interesting.Viewers were hard pressed to control your eye movements. They would focus on the dazzling display of pastel colours plastered on the chests on some of the fabrics, then the meticulous detail on the backs of the bustiers and suddenly follow the bounce of the skirts as they moved down the runway. At times it seemed the dresses were carrying the model not the other way around.

One piece had so much intense volume in the hips that the model had no choice but to waddle with it across the stage.  There was a sense of rhythm in the dresses, not only in the patterns but in the way the fabric was shaped and cut. Ruffles along the shoulders, neck and chest brought body to the pieces and a symmetry not emulated in the colour schemes.  Most pieces carried a two-tone theme. Where the front of a dress would be a lighter pink the back would be a darker maroon colour. This played on the bi-polar inspiration of this collection.

Attention to detail was solid in this set. Everything from the lace skirts, to the strings and ribbons on the back of the corsets, all illustrated a dedication to the theme and eras which were explored. When being so bold however, a designer is bound to run into problems. A couple of the pieces didn’t fit the models as well as they could have; one dress sat too high in the front (which I believe was intentional) and another seam ended too low beneath the bust.

In addition, a buckle or two needed to be tighter in the back to really illuminate the corset look.  Despite these minor setbacks this collection will definitely be remembered. Dusted Rose Designs augmented the variety of womanly shapes and added layers, colours and patterns which took each audience member to an enchanted place, as odd as that place might be.

Words by Ian Keteku