Some say in fashion familiarity breeds comfort. Perhaps it’s because we’re talking about an industry that so frequently recycles the past. We’ve mentioned Sandra Backlund many times on our site. She’s our Swedish comfort, perhaps. The attraction to Sandra’s work is this: regardless of fashions ever-increasing desire for change, there’s something in Sandra’s familiarity of design that is reassuring. In many ways we know what to expect and yet it still surprises. Even to us.
Sandra’s designs are about volume. Texture. A defiance of gravity. Exaggerated to the nth degree. It’s been wonderful to watch her ideas shape, shift and grow stronger. Sometimes when you begin to tread a path of success, there’s every bit the possibility of losing a little integrity in favour of financial backing. Or influential buyers. Because to make it in fashion must mean a collection has to be wearable. Oh, the horror! But Sandra has never lost her vision. Sure, there have been subtle changes along the way, though more like a softening of the mould, but each season is still the same in heart as it was at the beginning. And she has almost single-handedly revolutionised the perception of knitwear. No longer do we turn to the chunky jumper styles of the 80s. Knitwear is about construction. Complex and consuming and technically convoluted. It’s become cool again.
We digress. Sandra’s new SS 2011 collection is incredibly refined. Crochet and fine gauge knitwear, the newer aspects to her aesthetic, are married in with the more dramatic pieces we have come to assume from Backlund’s body of work. It’s a compromise between industry and tradition; a transition from avant-garde design to popular fashion. Grey is the colour of choice, from ice to soft and something akin to marl. Delicate tees are paired with minis that pop with geometric patterns; knit dresses hug the figure and form shape at the hips or bust. A playful case of opposites attract.
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