Four months ago, Louise Goldin s inspiration board was filled with tear sheets from Gianni Versace s mid-nineties advertising campaigns—the ones with the original tawny-limbed supermodels working gladiator kilts, shot by Richard Avedon. That s where she started, while factoring in a dose of baroque curlicues gleaned from a V&A exhibition and a sidelong look at the pointy bras Jean Paul Gaultier made for Madonna s 1990 world tour. To her credit, this knitwear dynamo made none of that research overtly obvious when it came to sending out a collection honed for her twenty-first-century audience.
The Versace-derived pastel tones—lavender, baby blue, pink, lemon, violet, and mint green—were mixed with gold Lurex and engineered into a look that managed to include baby-doll silhouettes and leather bloomer shorts and still didn t look tacky. The skill and imagination are in Goldin s techniques. She transforms knitwear into what she thinks of as fabric, which she drapes and pleats into multilayer skirts, or wraps around the torso of a dress as dreamy, whisper-fine layers of tulle. The minutiae, too, are also knitted—using computer programs written by Goldin—down to the black "lace" edging on a fondant pink dress and the sheer tulle inserts in a gold cyber-bodysuit.
Perhaps even better, though, is the news that Goldin is responsible for a new capsule collection for Ballantyne. She s a talent who started off raw and became sophisticated and lauded in double-quick time. Next, she needs to convince buyers that she has a selling collection of simplified skirts, crop tops, and leggings that have the runway attitude but can be donned without the wearer feeling like a sci-fi movie extra.
