Dream of Venus was Salvador Dali’s exhibit at the 1939 World Fair, mixing painting, sculpture and nude performance art in a display of the otherworldly. His works of that decade Three Women with Heads of Flowers Finding the Skin of a Grand Piano on the Beach (1936) and Venus With the Head of Roses (1935) were a starting point for this collection, where flowers replaced female heads, standing for female sexual agency and honouring fashion illustration. The season’s hero print is a collaboration with a favourite New Zealand artist, Kirstin Carlin, from her work Untitled (Found Flowers).
AW20 also marks the first season under the label’s refined direction. Ingrid Starnes will make garments that are either in editions of one, for the bridal and made to measure range, or in editions of no more than 100 for all other styles. All pieces will be numbered, to shine a light on the artist edition values, design decisions and process of meaningful production that goes into the garments. Anyone owning a piece knows their’s is special, one of a consciously limited run, and is an alternative to over-production.