Pedro Lourenco - Ready To Wear - Spring Summer 2013 - Paris

02 Oct 2012
Ready To Wear Spring Summer 2013 Paris

Ever since his debut collection for Fall 2010, wunderkind Pedro Lourenço has been watched in a way that one imagines was how musicologists watched a young Mozart work. Despite access to materials and resources that most young designers would give their eyetooth for –both his parents are renowned fashion designers in their homeland of Brazil, this does not mean that Lourenço is taking any shortcuts with his vision, or his craft.

Construction is key to the Pedro Lourenço look: Razor-sharp tailoring is fast becoming one of his signatures, defining an aesthetic that will no doubt underpin his collections for seasons to come. Impeccably executed, this allows him to try his hand at trompe-l’oeil with contrasting materials on a trouser, creating a “shorts” effect on tailored straight slacks by finishing the leg in fleshy tones for a naked-leg effect. On outerwear, the precision of the cuts and work gives a stenciled effect to colors slashed diagonally from shoulder to hip.

Continuing in the blushing pink palette with which he had painted his resort, Lourenço created a masculine/feminine dichotomy in his spring/summer 2013 collection. As if to symbolize this, bisected hemlines and blocks of colors featured repeatedly in the collection, creating a tessellation of sorts that is the strongest visual key of this collection, and which repeats throughout, as weave, metallic quilted fabric or even in print.

His interplay of texture and print comes sharply in focus as a Letterman jacket with the shoulders and upper torso crafted in pink and red houndstooth, and from under which peeks an asymmetrical-hemmed skirt in a color-distorted print of the motif.

Moving on from his initial taste for the sharply but impractically futuristic dresses, Lourenço continues to wow the fashion scene even when moving in a direction that will see more of his pieces hitting the streets. As a whole, his work shows relevance and an ability to capture the underlying trends on a level that can compete with many of the mainstay names of Parisian fashion.

- Lily Templeton