In winter, fashion tends to hibernate. Colours curl up for the duration, brights go to sleep in the airing cupboard, and florals curl up their tendrils and sleep out the freeze.
In winter, fashion tends to hibernate. Colours curl up for the duration, brights go to sleep in the airing cupboard, and florals curl up their tendrils and sleep out the freeze. Not so for autumn/winter 2011, which sees an explosion of buds, seeds, petals and fronds sinuously creeping and climbing across skirts and dresses.
Jil Sander first: after a Pantone collection for summer which stole everybody's imagination, Raf Simons showed nostalgic – almost chintzy – florals in retro rusty shades, blown up and enlarged on voluminous shift dresses. These were not pretty blooms – they managed still to speak of utilitarianism, of functionality. In this way, Simons' collection was, as ever, terribly organic in its purpose; his flowers did not feel like embellishment or decoration, so much as those pesky blighters that grow up through the cracks in the terrace, no matter how hard you tackle them.
Next Balenciaga, where heavily stylised blossoms burgeoned on white panelled skirts. Wispily enveloping the wearer, this was not a busy profusion of print, more a smattering of growth in a cool season – nature to tide us over until the sun shines again, and a more considered use of print than the spring/summer directive of 'blob it all over'. One designer who doesn't shy away from the 'more is more' approach is Mary Katrantzou, whose palimpsest of rococo, koi, chinois and Paisley prints included too a healthy dose of florals. If everything else is there, goes the maxim, why not some buds too? She added them in 3D touches, cleverly surmounting beaded petals and tactile tendrils atop their printed renderings, extending a metaphor of growth while questioning the function of surface adornment.
Why exactly have we become so used to women being covered in flowers? Because, in the beginning, they were all we had. Country maids in their daisy chains, citified types and their posies, southern belles with their exotic hothouse bouquets – for many centuries, flowers were an accessory. Out of season, they were a luxury – so print manufacturers in the 18th century saw the use in man-making them for the months when the sun wasn't shining and designers for autumn/winter 2011 have resurrected the tradition. From painterly swipes and blotches to infinitessimally detailed ditsy prints, our wardrobes are as packed with flowers as a soilbed left too long without a tidy.
Of course there's almost nothing quite so cliched as showing florals for spring. This is the point – in winter, the woman who wears florals is as rare a specimen, as sturdy and hardy a bloom as those optimistic daffodils you sometimes see growing through snow. You want to congratulate them, cheer them on; you are grateful for the flash of colour they provide in an otherwise monochrome landscape.
Harriet Walker is a fashion writer at The Independent. Her book Less is More: Minimalism in Fashion is out now, published by Merrell.
Zoë Taylor has appeared in Le Gun, Bare Bones, Ambit and Dazed & Confused. She is currently working on her third graphic novella and an exhibition.
