MARY, Queen of Prints

MARY KATRANTZOU has been mesmerising the fashion world with her bold fragrance-bottle and aquarium patterns. vivienne tang sits down with the innovative prints genius

I’M AT THE Space, where the British Fashion Council has set up the temporary London Show Rooms so the Hong Kong media can meet Britain’s fashion newcomers. I’ve been waiting for nearly two hours, but still there’s no sign of Mary Katrantzou (who apparently is staying at the hotel across the street). I’m told she’s nursing a cold, that she’ll be here any minute…I wonder whether she’s getting carried away by her newfound fame as the leading designer of explosive prints. But when she finally arrives, I quickly reconstruct my image of her.

“I’m terribly sorry I’ve kept you waiting – I’m medicated now,” says Katrantzou with a chuckle. She’s soft-spoken, and her quiet, down-to-earth demeanour makes it difficult for me to hold a grudge. She’s worth waiting for.

Only 28 years old, the Athens-born designer currently rules the industry with her spellbinding, trompe l’oeil graphic prints. She burst onto the fashion map with her runway debut of perfume-flacon prints three years ago, and it has been a steady rise ever since. The launch collection was followed by other bold print themes such as blown glass and interiors (chiffon skirts fluttered like curtains and minis referenced lampshades with pendant crystals), as well as Ming vases and Fabergé eggs. In recognition, she was awarded a British Fashion Council Newgen sponsorship for six consecutive seasons (spring/summer 2009 to autumn/winter 2011).

Indeed, her brief career sounds like a fairy tale: an architecture student who went to London for love, only to become fashion’s most sought-after print maven. “I moved to London [from Greece] because my boyfriend moved to London,” she says casually. “I took a semester in textiles, just to see how it was, and I really liked it. I was always strong in colours. That was the first transition, from architecture to textiles. And the type of print that I was doing was very engineered, the curtain or the cushion or anything like that wasn’t the right type of 3D for engineered [print]. The body was a little bit more interesting to build a 3D print. So I applied it to fashion.”

Despite her loud, kaleidoscopic patterns, Katrantzou is clad in her signature all-black look, with barely-there make-up. But underneath the humble exterior lives a confident young woman with ambitious plans. She reveals her goal to produce her own shoes and jewellery (her catwalk shoes are currently designed by Christian Louboutin).

“In the past we didn’t really have the resources for it to be commercially viable,” she says about incorporating accessories in the collection. “It’s important for me at this stage to be able to show that the world I’ve created can be for ready-to-wear, shoes, accessories. And then eventually I would love to be able to work on interiors, because that’s my background. I’d love to build it as a lifestyle brand, so that people buy into it…not just to wear it, but to surround themselves with it. Of course it will take a lot of time to get there, but that’s what I aspire to.”

Katrantzou undertakes intensive research for her prints, and she’s even started to design her own three-dimensional patterns, as opposed to manipulating photos from Architectural Digest and sculpting them around the female body, which is what she did for her previous interior-themed collection.

“When I was doing blown glass, I went to a blown-glass factory,” she says about her second collection. “I had sketched what I wanted to create, and then I took pictures of that and translated it into prints. With the interiors, it was a collage of different interiors. The f lower field [in the latest collection] is completely computer generated. So even though it’s supposed to reference a tulip field, it’s not real. It’s really done with 3D shading. It’s a mix. I think what keeps it challenging but also quite fresh is to try to use the technology differently every time. It’s not just about taking pictures and putting them on a dress.”

Although she still works with 30 to 40 prints per collection, in the past two years Katrantzou has grown from brilliant printmaker to innovative designer, paying more attention to the cuts and the silhouette. She has introduced knitwear as well as separates, which have even garnered her a growing male fan base.

“I’ve been approached a few times on Twitter and Facebook by men who wanted to know if I was going to design menswear anytime soon,” she says. “At the beginning I thought it would be a little bit too extravagant for men. Then this season was my first attempt to do a blazer and a trouser suit, and men bought privately. Respected men from the fashion industry embrace that part of the collection. I think in the future we’ll have more of that, and it can potentially grow into its own collection.”

Have any big fashion houses come knocking on her door yet? “I have been approached a couple of times,” she responds. “One was for the creative director position. That one was just to head prints. It’s very difficult to make a decision. We’ve invested so much time in this, and it’s such an early stage. First of all, I don’t have the team to be able to afford to do both, and I wouldn’t be prepared to leave this. It’s doing really well now. We’re selling to 160 stores now. I’ve developed those relationships over time. It’s just a shame to give that up. I think there’s a lot of potential to grow it, and you have to give it the time to get to where it should go.”

Either way, Katrantzou has plenty on her plate. Over the past few seasons she has joined forces with high-street retail giant Topshop, which sponsors the Newgen scholarship, to design a range of scarves and dresses in her signature prints. The spring/summer 2012 capsule collection will hit shelves in February; some of the sculpted dresses are said to be inspired by her autumn/winter 2011 collection, which featured porcelain vases and Fabergé eggs.

“I’ve learnt so much by working with them,” she says of her collaboration with Topshop. “I had to produce on a much bigger scale, with a lot more volume and a much lower price. And I had to look at the different target audiences. I had to think about the Topshop girl and woman who are not going to spend £3,000 on a dress, and I wanted to do something more fun, and a little bit more young. I really had to learn how to quality-control a garment on a price level that they’re used to.”

Katrantzou is still showing in London and, even though many of her peers and predecessors have tried their luck in Paris, she isn’t one to turn her back on the city that made her famous – at least not yet.

“I think we always look up to Paris because of all the fashion houses,” she reflects. “However, London is perfect for me. And people now really come to London. They design in London. Fashion Week there has matured. People design things with a lot more practical skill now. So London now, for sure, and then in the future…yeah, why not?”