Under The Abaya...

So this was the brilliant turn out for Tempest's A/W 2010 collection that was inspired by both Queen Sheeba's journey to Israel and Islamic architecture. This season saw a more grown up Tempest executing sophisticated, powerful pieces that screamed attitude. The colours were a palette of satin blacks, midnight blues, hints of moonlight metallic and punches of emerald and peppermint green. The quality that cleverly strung all of these beautiful pieces together was the fine details and superb structuring that featured origami folds, horizontal panelling and perfect draping. Clear referencing to architects Rafael Vinoly and Tom Wright, were visible in the smooth, clean lines and geometric patterns that protruded a majority of the dresses. 

 

Islamic Architecture

The referencing of the blue and green hues are visible in Tempest's colour palette, as well as the folded origami and geometric shapes seen in the photos above.

 
 

A portrait of Queen Sheeba's journey to Israel

 
 

Famous Architecture by Tom Wright (top) and Rafael Vinoly (bottom) 

The obvious qualities of these buildings are highly visible in Tempest's construction and geometrics.

There is something bold, strong and powerful about this collection that really caught my attention. It seems to mould really well into our ideas for our final cut and it again references the dress of a 2nd year design student that we want to use, extremely well. The running colour of the collection was black, but not just any black. The colour seemed to have a personality, a dark characteristic, highlighted through its execution and presentation. Sweeping streams of black metallic poured out of dresses and gave an unnatural, raw feel to the outfit. The way in which the light caught the fabric too, was seducing and had a dark underlie. Furthermore the exaggerated, protruding origami folds gave the dresses a heartbeat, a life. The dress seemed to be wearing the model rather than vice-versa, and it was slightly overpowering in the sense that the dress looked like it was growing, metamorphing.

This is perfect for the unnatural, raw, slightly disturbing and ugly feel that we wanted to bring to our work. We want the costume to dominate and overtake the model wearing it. This gave me the idea of an evolution; our film through dance and movement, will visualise the painful and disturbing metamorphism from the model to the dress. The dress will overpower and have an evil inclination.
This collection is truly beautiful and fundamentally sharp and intelligent. It has provided a new wave of inspiration for me and has reassured confidence in our final ideas. Tempest said backstage, “I’m really happy. I think it’s my best collection to date”. He couldn’t be more right.