Lights out and off I ran to another venue—this one a tube journey away. I was fashionably late but not late enough it seems as there was a massive line outside the space—a Victorian row house. The designer I was waiting for was Ana Sekularac, and judging from the other people in line, I had an idea what to expect from the collection. I was surrounded by people in black nail polish, white Doc Martens, heavy black eyeliner (guyliner for the gents), ghostly white makeup, and spiky hair. Perhaps it would be a Goth show?
The off-off Broadway equivalent to a Fashion Week show, these off-site shows can be just as nice or even better than the big ones, but this one was horribly disorganized. We waited outside for a whopping forty-five minutes. The guy working the door informed us after twenty or so that they were rehearsing inside. Rehearsing?! He should have said there was a malfunction with the lights or something ... didn’t his mumsy tell him to bend the truth at times? When we finally got in, the place was absolutely crammed. The three rows on either side of the runway were all on the same level as the runway, so when the show began, people in the second and third rows had to stand to see the entire outfit.
Disorganization aside, I was pleasantly surprised by the collection. I thought I was so frightfully clever calling the show based on the audience, but instead of head-on Goth, this was Futuristic Goth with impeccable tailoring. Think Mad Max, Ingrid Bergman, and Man Ray all folded into one. I had expected the colors to be black, black, and well … black, but actually there was cream with that black, and a few red and blue pieces in the mix too. One really interesting detail was a white leather accent piece that tied around the waist on a few different looks. It looked like an apron, or maybe a shield. I wondered if the designer was saying something by placing this apron/shield right over each model’s uterus and ovaries. Interesting …
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