The Tamesis
David Koma is mesmerized by Venice this season, which is no surprise considering La Serenissima’s centuries-old habit of attracting the most discerning visitors. “It brought out the artist in me,” he says, noting that he completely succumbed to the city’s mysterious nocturnal charm and shadowy allure. Masked balls, elegant debauchery, fetishistic frisson, sensuality in luxury: Koma enumerates all the Venetian clichés and weaves them into the dark romantic fantasy he created for Blumarine.
A 1992 advertising campaign shot in Venice by Albert Watson serves as the visual starting point, while images of Helmut Newton, another touchstone of the brand, linger in the background. For Koma, Newton’s brand of pornography was never about shock value: fetishism, he insisted, was “not about provocation, but about control.” The idea resulted in a striking hourglass silhouette, an evolution of the corsets Koma has introduced since joining the brand for its first season. Here, it develops into a compact mini crinoline, wrapped in lace and fastened with gilded buttons shaped like masks and lion heads, Blumarine’s Venetian emblem.
Twisted, prickly and fierce, the brand’s signature sentimental roses were spun into dazzling 3D plissé rosettes, scattered on sheer miniskirts, or sewn with beads on bias-cut, sheer georgette slips and layered under voluminous capes in a nod to the sky. tabaroa traditional Venetian cloak. A fluffy shearling bolero patterned with harlequin diamond intarsia from carnival costumes was worn only over lace briefs, then haphazardly redistributed as a plush blanket and tossed on the gondola seats.
Black lingerie corsets barely pretending to be hidden beneath long, voluminous coats contrasted with the crumbling decadence of ancient palaces, or wafted out of the mist of Venice at dawn, when the city looked most conspiratorial, heightening the drama of the boudoir atmosphere. Flashes of fiery red explode into black and white hues, leaving aside the occasional dusty pinks and pale blues of faded Venetian stucco. For Coma, Venice is not about the minuets of courtship or the moonlit serenades of the lagoon; It’s about desire, lust, and the dangers of getting lost in mazes, twists and turns calluspreferably at dawn, before anyone notices the slight bend in your five-inch heels.
