Cutenerd has a collection, poodles.
Project Runway Season 7 contestant Ben Chmura showed his first resort collection, Lamia's Wrath, at Garment District 813 in Tampa Florida. Press release:
"Ben Chmura is known for making small references to the past while still making efforts to design for the future. With his first resort collection, Lamia’s Wrath, he has done it again. Lamia is a Greek character that was famously rumored to be cursed by Hera and transformed into half woman and half serpent. Chmura has taken inspiration from John Keats’ poem “Lamia,” and John Waterhouse’s ethereal depictions of the character.
In this collection, Chmura pays homage to the description of Lamia from Keats’ poem and has created looks filled with vibrant colors full of texture to resemble the idea of the serpent portion of her body. Evolving his ideas of retro-futurism, Chmura has designed a 10-look capsule collection that will embody the elements of 50’s and 60’s fashion, while modernizing it through new silhouettes and embellishments. Chmura will also be featuring two men’s looks to add the element of Lamia’s reputation of luring men with her beauty.
The collection is saturated in shades of vermillion, aqua, textural ivories and neutrals of raw silk, silk linen, silk faille, molded bleached wicker and metallic silks. Chmura has also distressed and refaced crocodile embossed platform pumps with a rose gold color and incorporated pink sequined, netted overlays that wrap around the shoe in a serpentine manner. There are moments of draping that will reflect the Greek inspiration without it seeming contrived or forced. Chmura’s intent is to offer a collection full of color, texture and extreme fusion of past and future silhouettes while making women feel beautiful empowerment, like Lamia herself."
Nerds. Always overthinking things.
Actually, we're just kidding. We can't say we love this collection as much as his vibrantly colored superhero-esque Bryant Park collection, but it still has that funky Chmura vibe. In fact, it looks quite a bit like the kind of outfits Ben himself would wear. There's a sense of play at work with proportions. Skirts and pants are either baggy or tight, sitting too low or too high under elongated tops. There's not enough color to our way of thinking, but when it's there, it's in those saturated tones and interesting combinations Ben does well. In the end, this collection is all about the pieces, of which we like quite a few. We don't love a lot of the outfits as they're presented here, either in the pairings or in the overall styling (which was a little drab), but when you mentally break each look down, you find individual pieces that are downright covetable.
[Photo Credit: drunkcameraguy.com]
Post a Comment
Labels: Ben Chmura
No comments:
Post a Comment