Athens Fashion Week has become an inspiring showcase for Greece’s new crop of designers. Iliana Fokianaki singles out the stars of the latest shows
There’s a new mood in Athens’s fashion scene thanks to the success of Greek designers both at home and abroad. Particularly exciting is the fact that those who have made their names outside Greece, such Sophia Kokosalaki and Mary Katrantzou in London, are being challenged by an evergrowing array of Athens-based talents. The collaboration of Filep Motwary and Maria Mastori, for instance, working with fashion legend Diane Pernet and the two designers (Motwary for clothing and Mastori for jewellery) are charming the fashion world abroad.
Naturally, all of them have served as much-needed inspiration for local young designers, who are beginning to define a distinctive Greek style ready to make its mark on the world of fashion.
Among these is Delight, the label of dynamic duo Daphne Iliaki and Evi Retziou, which showed its fourth collection this October to great applause. The ability to corner
up with completely different ideas each time while maintaining a signature style has made the brand a darling of the Greek fashion magazines and secured a list of famous clients. Iliaki and Retziou’s promise has been clear from the beginning. Their first collection, for autumn/ winter 2009, featured beautiful colours, strong patterns, architectural lines and decorated jackets and dresses, with just a hint of Narciso Rodriguez, Matthew Williamson and Pierre Cardin. These same elements reappeared in the next two collections, albeit with a completely different interpretation.
Such individual work has been noticed abroad as well as at home;
Delight was awarded the prize for Most Commercial Design Collection for spring 2011 at the first International Designer Awards held by the International Apparel Federation (IAF) in Hong Kong last October. The line is stocked in chic boutiques in Moscow and Berlin and has shown at Cluj Napoca Fashion Week in Romania. Iliaki and Retziou have also been busy designing uniforms for the staff of the prestigious new Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens and dreaming up Delight’s autumn/ winter 2011 collection.
Another young star of the most recent Athens Fashion Week was Dimitris Zafiriou, whose background in fine arts and theatre-costume design is a clear influence on his collections. His first was in 2008, after a spell working with Greek designer I Angelos Bratis followed by a § confidence-boosting collaboration f with Le Showroom in Paris. In the same year he won the New Talent award at Athens Fashion Week, which led to his participation at the Create Europe fashion show in Berlin, where he presented his collection Futuristic Queens.
Zafiriou’s designs combine the simplicity of Calvin Klein with Dolce & Gabbana’s sexiness. The collection he presented for spring/ summer 2011 – his fifth – was full of satin figure-hugging dresses, semi-sheer mini dresses paired with sexy see-through socks and high heels for rock-chicks who love to dress up. It was full of fresh ideas that really embraced the summer mood, with cutting- edge combinations of fabrics and wonderful colourful patterns paired with beige in his trademark textiles of choice: see-through lace, sheer satin and black flannel. One unexpected pleasure was his new jewellery collection, chunky art deco designs that were simply divine.
The baby of the pack, Evangelos Kavathas, showed his first collection in Athens Fashion Week only last season, but still managed to offer almost 30 designs. His experience as a theatre-costume designer, stylist and visual merchandiser has given him a wealth of experience from which to draw inspiration. Last year, he won the newcomer award at Athens Fashion Week, and was runner-up in the Most Commercial Design category in the IAF International Designer Awards in New Delhi in 2009.
Fashion bloggers and editors have all raved about his sleek, sexy lines and floaty fabrics. Most have nicknamed him ‘the Greek Halston’, since his clothes are definitely made for a dynamic 70s diva with a contemporary twist in her look. His timeless, minimalistic designs with a dash of Greek goddess and his love of silk are bound to win him fans among women of any age. As for his latest collection, the critics in Athens were ecstatic about the combination of intense colours with austere lines.
With such inspired – and inspirational – young designers forging a new Greek fashion identity, the future looks promising for Athens. Savvy shoppers, take note delight, gr dimitrizafiriou. com evangeloskavathas. gr
Dear Sir, Madam
we would like to make clear that our relationship with Mme D.P started long before the Athens Fashion Week.
We would appreciate if you made the correction.
Thanking you in advance
Filep Motwary
Maria Mastori
Thanks for the information. I reread the article and am not quite sure which part I should change to reflect it, so I will just leave your comment here publicly to make the point. Hope this is OK for you!