At first sight: pretty. Second glance: loaded with visual aftershock. The dresses in Christopher Kane s first-ever pre-collection radiate instant-appeal commerciality in just enough of a subversive way to be interesting. "I wanted something natural, but I m so fed up with florals," he explained in his London studio. "And then I came across these images of nuclear test explosions from the fifties to the seventies on the Internet. I like the crazy-bright chemical colors. The way they re sinister—but beautiful."
The hyper-colored mushroom-cloud prints, sourced from free public-access photos on the U.K. Ministry of Defense Web site, are placed on innocent-looking suspended cutout baby-doll and georgette T-shirt dresses and some of Kane s signature soft biker jackets. "I wanted clean, sexy shapes that are quite easy to wear," he said. Most are short, but the newest-looking—possibly a direction for next season—is a mid-calf dress cleverly draped to catch the waist without clinging. The collection is further fleshed out with Kane s made-in-Scotland cashmeres, a "Shrapnel" organza dress decorated with grosgrain tabs that shimmy with movement, and crinkly washed leather jackets.
All this, in addition to a mega-successful new T-shirt line (the latest have the explosions in black and white), an expanded collection for Topshop timed to drop in September, and his avidly ordered Fall collection for Versus: Is there no limit to Kane s prodigious growth? Well, maybe. The wedges in these pictures aren t for sale. "We didn t have any shoes, so we cobbled them together ourselves with gaffer tape and whatnot in the studio," he admits. "But I liked it, sort of walking on clouds!"
