The Canadian designer, known for his intricate, cobweb-like knitwear creations showed only nine looks for fall 2013. If the one cape — long, fitted and all done with dripping silky fringes — was a convincing alternative to fur for a night out, a couple of big, graphic shawls wrapped around the models’ shoulders didn’t looked as distinctive.
The Mark Fast woman seems to be in something of a funk, or rather it is the designer himself—the collection is called Through the Darkness, after all. Apparently, the designer decided to use this ill mood and create some beautiful garments in the process. A tight, black, shaggy mohair maxi dress opened the proceedings but was given something of a monastic feel with the addition of a black knitted headpiece—this was a motif that was repeated throughout. In short, it is hard to be seen as a simple sexpot in a knitted coif—even with the addition of some remarkable stocking shoes by the footwear designer Eelko Moorer.
In fact, the coif appeared to be a nod to the costume designer and art director Eiko Ishioka, who died last year and was one of the inspirations for the show. Among her credits were the Oscar-winning costumes for Bram Stoker's Dracula and the production design of Mishima, as well as the extraordinary costumes in that profoundly odd Jennifer Lopez vehicle The Cell. As Fast said at the end of his show, "I had drama going on in my life, and this was reflected in the drama in the clothes. These were dark times, but I wanted to find the beauty in that and show emotion through texture. It was a different way of working for me." And it succeeded.
