PS17
PART 1
Liudmila’s Pre-Spring ’17 collection plays on the recurring theme of Dickensian Victoriana, while showcasing the brand’s signature elements in a whole new light. Half the collection concentrates on heavily Victorian-influenced boots in dark, glossy, skins reminiscent of polished floors and worn armchairs in Victorian pubs and members’ clubs while hinting at the grimy patina that develops on leather after heavy use in a foggy, soot-blackened 19th-century London. The fantasy element central to Liudmila is developed here by play- ing with these masculine leathers and peppering them with subtle hints at the magical Victorian underworld, filled with witches, oddball scholars and crimi- nals unchecked. We have dainty heels and buckled boots with dark, oxblood eelskin, masses of laces pulling at a paneled boot made with hand-dyed, a glossy, unevenly brown kangaroo. Dirty-looking speckled velvets are decorat- ed with embroidered gold graphs from old Persian astronomy texts, fusing the two worlds together.
PART 2
The other half of the collection is the bright, shiny “magic” that stands apart from the dark leathers and dirty velvets. It is a tribute to Victorian hobbyists and members clubs filled with exotic curiosities plundered from foreign lands. We imagine that the residents of our underworld might have paid these dis- play-cases a few illicit nighttime visits. We create a sharp contrast by focusing entirely on rare, beautiful examples of semipreciousstones like ocean jasper, metallic quartz geode and incredible semi-transparent agates in purple and pink, shot through with bright fire-red. We blew up these stones and abstract- ed them, playing with transparency, pearlescent leather, beads, and elements copied directly from the stones to make shoes that resemble bright amulets in the sea of grime and darkness.