Karla Spetic (Q4894)
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Karla Spetic is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Karla Spetic |
Karla Spetic is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
As usual, lace was king on the Karla Spetic runway. The opening look, a quasi-ballgown with a black lace long sleeve bodice, and a skirt with a bit of volume at the hips, was followed by a model in black lace pants with a black oversized jacket with functional lace-up (get it?) details on the sleeves. Backstage after the show, the designer explained the main inspiration for the season was “Japanese cult cinema,” which was most evident in the tailoring itself. “I really wanted the tailoring to be unrestricted, a little but undone,” she added. “You can take the sleeves off, you can take the collars off, and really play around with it. I wanted to bring a sense of movement—like a samurai.”The sheer lace bodysuits and dresses that are her signature also inspired cheeky lingerie prints that looked like they’d been through a photocopier. “I wanted a sense of comfort and I think lingerie can be so restrictive for us women, so rather than wearing it I thought, ‘I’m going to put them on top.’” The lingerie prints and their floral companions, also treated with a similar high-contrast effect, were the highlights of the collection—as seen on a black and white polka dot blouse paired with a skirt printed with a reverse photo of a garter belt and stockings (so it shows white on black); a white jacket with an all-over tiny black floral print; and a short-sleeve white and black lace dress worn underneath a mid-length skirt with a reverse photo of just the garter belt.A short sleeve space-dyed knit top worn with matching pants and accessorized with a knitted “garter belt” was intriguing, but it turned out to be the only knit look in the collection. It would’ve been great to see Spetic explore knitwear in exchange for one or two of the many lace catsuits that walked the runway. Elsewhere, her take on a white suit, which came towards the end of the show and consisted of an oversized jacket with lace-up sleeves, narrow trousers, and a lace skirt layered over the trousers, was a more grown-up version of her vision.
15 May 2024
The muse sang for Karla Spetic this season. Drawing on Greco-Roman statuary, Septic explored antiquity’s notions of the female form, taking a sculptor’s approach to sheer dresses with female silhouettes on them and cut-out tailoring. The results were, well, a little antiquated. In a time when the world is celebrating a strong, empowered kind of womanity, reducing the female body to a graphic silhouette print feels somewhat retrograde. A perspex and pearl garter belt styled with a cropped white button up just isn’t the kind of sexiness women are after now.What Spetic was missing was the fluidity of the Greeks. Where were the curves of the Venus de Milo? The rippling drapery of the Victory of Samothrace? The subversive kinkiness of Eurydice? The closest Spetic got to Orpheus’s lover was a lyre print on a white apron dress, one of the collection’s best pieces. Spetic’s hard shapes might be her signature, but they could have used a little softening around the edges to be more reflective of the times.
16 May 2019
With the waves of Bondi as its backdrop, Karla Spetic’s Resort show explored themes of environmentalism and sustainability. The most obvious references to that idea were Spetic’s bubble-wrap dresses and coats and her recycling symbol–printed dresses, the former representing our waste, and the latter our need to fix the mess we’ve caused on this planet. As far as messages go, it was a potent one, but it had little connection to the rest of Spetic’s beachy collection.Transparency is a recurring theme in her work, and she sent out translucent trenches and separates that looked at home on Bondi’s shore. The strongest looks came in a bold gingham, where the graphic print provided a counter to Spetic’s girlish ruffles and feminine shapes. One look composed of a navy check top—longer in the back and wrapped like a bra in the front—over a miniskirt with a sheer ruffle could seem like a lot, but somehow, with the model’s white Croc shoes, it felt strangely right. The quirk factor is one Spetic doesn’t often explore, but when she does, it adds an extra oomph to her clothes.
15 May 2018
Karla Spetic deals in a sheer sportiness. This season, she had a decidedly more saccharine focus, slicing and dicing up girly accents like pouf sleeves and oversize florals into second-skin tops or transparent blouses with geometric panels. The results were more funny than fashionable. Where Spetic’s sensibility shined was in semi-sheer trenchcoats and trousers in ’70s plaids. With oversize shapes and wriggling lines, the pieces had a bold perversity to them that reminded this reviewer, at least, of the wholesome kinkiness of Rei Kawakubo’s lumps and bumps collection of Spring 1997, now on view at the Met. Let’s hope Spetic’s posse of Aussie girls are willing to ride her more subversive wave of cool.
17 May 2017
How to translate the Victorian spirit that’s taken hold in European fashion for an Australian audience caught up in the sporty life? Karla Spetic’s whimsical collection posed a solution. All the signature cutouts, sheer tees, and side slits associated with athletic-chic were present, matched with girly frill collars, scalloped edges, and whimsical lavender prints.Lavender, it seems, grows abundant in Dubrovnik, the designer’s Croatian hometown, and served as a starting point for the collection. Some of the sweetest pieces featured blown-up screen prints of the buds, magnified to look like science class projections, on slim skirts and as ruffle-trimmed rectangles placed at the center of pinafore tops like stamps on an envelope. That idea continued with photographic prints of the Dubrovnik seaside on white dresses. The biggest claim you could make against them is that they were a touch too quirky for their own good, but a little oddball flourish was welcome in Spetic’s just-left-of-center collection.
17 May 2016
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8 April 2013