Willow (Q3688)
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Willow is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Willow |
Willow is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
2003
creative director
Sydney-based Willow is in the midst of a fast expansion back home, opening stores at a breakneck pace. So there was something metaphorically fitting about the fact that the premise of Kit Willow's latest collection was the dot: You could think of it as a barely there point in space, but considered from another angle, it contains infinity.That theme played itself out here in various ways: There were physical dots, both actual ones, on tulle, and extrapolated leopard spots and perforation; the collection also emphasized circular cutting, with material draped in great swathes. Willow got at the idea of shifting perspective with materials like holographic silver leather that bounced the eye around, and via garments that could be worn in multiple ways. In those instances, adaptability was mainly expressed through long straps, which could hang loose or wind around garments to change their silhouettes. The problem with that strategy, though, was that the straps were a distracting element unless, and until, they were put to use. The circular cutting worked better, resulting in some interesting asymmetric looks. Willow's emphasis this time out was on relaxed shapes, and pieces that could not only be adapted on their own but also mixed and layered in almost modular ways. Again, the theory was better than the practice, as all the diffuseness and changeability meant that no particularly strong proposition emerged through the collection as a whole. The designer also seemed to be hedging on whether she wanted to give her conceptual program its due, or create good commercial pieces. The more straightforward and commercial looks were the strongest here; an ensemble such as a sharp pair of tapered trousers and split bias-cut blouse might not have contained infinity, but it was focused like a point. Sometimes, that's enough.
28 September 2013
Kit Willow was doing a lot of extrapolating this season. Her premise this time out was to work from the "grain" of her fabrics, whether that meant draping material in long swathes or pulling leather fringe from the selvage of her cotton-and-leather tweed. The latter idea she riffed into knits, laser-cut leathers, and silk prints based on the tweed and chain embellishment that mimicked the look of the fringe. The draping, meanwhile, led Willow to this collection's most compelling silhouette: the elongated tops worn over trousers. A white jacquard bustier top was particularly chic, with its train redolent of fifties couture. Elsewhere, Willow did well with her high-waist, spiral-seam trousers in the tweed print, and with a group of white silk pieces covered in black tulle. And though some of the fringing or chain embellishment came off heavy-handed, Willow's leathers made measured use of the motif, and had something of the tribal look that's become a signature of her brand. Still, this collection was at its best at its simplest.
27 June 2013
Kit Willow is celebrating the tenth anniversary of her brand this year, and to mark that milestone, she's turned her attention back to her native territory of Australia. There wasn't anything too aesthetically antipodean about Willow's latest collection, but its emphasis on light- to mid-weight pieces and adaptable outerwear was a nod to the temperate climate Down Under. You wouldn't wish to brave the depths of the average New York winter in Willow's three-way coat, a long-line black gilet with a removable cropped leather jacket on top, but it would see you through gentler weather in considerable style. Cleverly, Willow designed a few different cropped jackets that could fit over the zippered gilet; one version that looked especially relevant for this season boasted balloon-size sleeves.Willow also made a smart calculation in focusing on marble prints—she couldn't have known that Alexander Wang would make that the theme of his first show for Balenciaga, of course, but her Carrara-inspired split skirts and papery bias-cut dresses looked especially spot-on because he did. Elsewhere, the designer executed some nice updates of her signature looks, including laser-cut leather bustiers and adapted motorcycle jackets in buttery-soft rose- and emerald-colored leather. This was a measured collection with a lot of accessible, attractive pieces.
1 March 2013
Sydney-based designer Kit Willow has shown at London fashion week before—back in 2004, when her label was still in its infancy. Today, the designer is a fully paid-up member of the Australian fashion establishment, with five stores Down Under, strong international sales, and most significantly, an identifiable look. This season, as she returned to the London catwalk, she decided to hark back to her brand's roots. This was a collection steeped in Willow signatures, including draped leathers, nude tones, and Madame Grès-inspired tulle micro-pleating. First and foremost among her signatures, however, is her lingerie-inspired construction, and in this collection it provided most of the jolt. Updating a vintage Dior technique, she created single-wire bustiers that girded a gravity-defying strapless dress and crisp, skin-flashing tops. A single-wire bra top also recurred as a proper underpinning, visible beneath floaty sheers.Willow pushed her sheer theme hard this season, but not always to great effect. There were too many garments that just looked shapeless, though the non-silhouette silhouette worked better when the fabric itself was intriguing. To wit, the luminescent sheer material from couture textile house Jakob Schlaepfer: Unbelievably fine and incredibly cool, it made the models in the two show-closing looks appear as though they were emerging out of the shimmering desert heat. Those closing looks were helped, too, by the fact that the dresses worn beneath the Schlaepfer sheer were interesting—new takes on Willow's characteristic articulated body-con, with hand-embroidered copper sequins creating a tubular effect. All in all, though, this collection felt a little unfocused, as though Willow had addressed herself to tuning up the various signatures of her brand at the expense of really developing her best ideas.
13 September 2012
Willow is based in Australia, but more often than not, you'd be hard-pressed to locate anything particularly Australian in Kit Willow's clothes. This season, though, she found inspiration close to home—namely, in the painted raw linen used as a wall covering in the new Willow shop in Sydney and in the extraordinarily hardy hide of the Australian crocodile, a vicious creature sometimes referred to as the last dinosaur. (Fun fact: Did you know that crocs kill or injure as many people in Australia each year as sharks do? Don't go to Australia!) What unites these two seemingly binary influences, Willow explained, is their surface-ness—an abstract connection, to be sure, but one she elaborated through the collection's use of croc prints and applied finishes, such as the foil scales stamped onto leather. In addition, she played with the crocodile theme by patterning dresses and skirts to resemble draped hides.As seasonal themes go, "surface elements" is pretty loose, and this collection's strength was that Willow didn't waste energy overemphasizing it. Yes, there were the rather literal metallic scales and the croc-inspired cuts, but there were also the killer silk pants, slit up-up-up on the side, which didn't have much to do with anything except looking dead sexy and easy to wear. And though you could, if you tried, make a case for Willow's Madame Grès-pleated numbers having a kind of pachydermal density and tactility, that would only undermine their well-made loveliness. Except, actually, it wouldn't, because Kit Willow's emerging signature as a designer is her ability to marry tough and pretty in an idiosyncratic way—that Madame Grès dress, those slit-open trousers, the trademark bras and corsets, they all have a warrior princess mien. You might even call it an outback mentality.
17 June 2012
Butterflies were the theme du jour at Willow, though you wouldn't necessarily get that just from looking at the clothes. As designer Kit Willow explained, the inspiration was mainly a conceptual one, but it trickled down into the collection's circular seaming, cocoon shapes, and monarch butterfly palette of orange and black. The construction here was interesting: jackets made using only three arcing seams, drop-waist skirts with a kind of skeleton of rounded pleats, long dresses with a winglike flap. Willow's strongest pieces relied on her very cool French tweed. Two particular standouts were the cocoonish, dress-up/dress-down coat, faced in leather, that cleverly set the tweed's stripe against itself, and a seriously chic dress with a fitted, long-sleeve top and skirt that fell in an off-center cascade. Elsewhere, Willow used her signature seed beading to graphic effect, and she cut some very sharp boot-leg trousers. All in all, this was a very grown-up outing from Willow: The pieces were less flirty than usual but ultimately very seductive.
16 February 2012
The genesis of Kit Willow's latest collection was a snapshot her mother took, of a palm tree at sunset on St. Kilda beach in Melbourne. As inspirations go, this one had the vast potential to degenerate into cheesiness—especially given that she used the photograph as the basis for her collection's sole print. (Visions of "wish you were here" postcards dance in your head.) But the digital palm-print looks weren't bad—they had an unexpected edginess—and anyway, the real action in this collection was in Willow's experiments with fabrication and draping. If an old snapshot set her down the path of hand-weaving seed beads into mesh, then draping rectangles of the resulting material off sexy little numbers, then all to the good.Willow's trick here was to take non-challenging silhouettes—a form-fitting dress, for instance—and give them a textural dimension. The seed-beading did that; so did the soigné, handwoven French tweed that she developed based on the seed-beaded material. She also had the very good, very straightforward idea of draping pieces of tulle off the surface of several looks; the technique gave pieces such as a tailored, electric blue dress a sense of movement, without interfering with the underlying silhouette. Why hasn't anyone thought of this before? All in all, this collection was full of playful, good concepts like that, executed with the right, slightly kittenish touch.
15 September 2011
Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left.
26 June 2011
Wild zebras are out and dressage horses are in. "I'm still interested in the connections between humans and animals," Kit Willow said, "but this season, I wanted to explore the very formal way we dress to ride these beautiful horses." That meant there were snug, tailored riding jackets with high, fitted armholes; high-collared white cotton shirts; and a draped jodhpur. So what happened to this Aussie designer's trademark edge? It's true that the body-con dresses that stalked her runway last year at this time were gone—chalk up the easier, more forgiving silhouettes to the fact that she gave birth to her second baby three months ago, she said. But look closely and there was attitude to spare in the laced leather neckline of a little black dress in tulle, in the black and white check of a pair of high-waisted pants that was actually a macro print of woven horsehair, and in the copper, horseshoe-shaped sequins of a sleeveless party top. Motorcycle riding was Willow's other fixation this season, so she added black leather to the lineup, in the form of a quilted and cropped perfecto, second-skin skirts, and stretchy leggings. They were plenty sexy, but they didn't feel like a step in a new direction the way the equestrienne pieces did.
8 February 2011
Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine might have a bone to pick with Australian up-and-comer Kit Willow. The British pop star has been wearing pieces from the designer's body-conscious Fall collection on the concert circuit. (Net-a-Porter had to reorder the long-sleeved tattoo dress after the singer wore it on the red carpet in August.) But Willow—perhaps inspired by her second pregnancy—has set off in a less flashy and rather timely new direction for Spring. Taking cues from nature, not the nightclub, she designed a lush digital print on silk tulle and a cotton viscose knit from an enlarged image of a wild zebra's mohawk and cut them into an asymmetrically draped party dress and a tank and sarong pant set, respectively. Balancing those and other tribal elements like shell embroidery and wooden beading were sharply cut, wear-with-everything tailored pieces, such as a single-button white leather jacket and a double-breasted blazer in military drab. For evening, Willow embellished a black zip-up vest and miniskirt with metal and plastic paillettes and tossed both of them over an acid yellow bra. Maybe there's something here for Welch, after all.
7 September 2010