computer says colour (and print)

Print has matured. Colour’s reached new and dizzying heights. One look at Spring/Summer 2012 and you’ll be shipped away on a euphoric high that will have you singing “para para paradise”.

Last season was so black and beige. If someone had said just 3 months ago, I’d be tempted by fuchsia pink jackets, I would have laughed in their face and said to stop being silly. Me? Colour? No. Print? Never.

And yet here we are, at the beginning of a tidal techno-colour wave. You only have to look at my beloved staple, ever so simple and clean-cut, reliable Cos to realise the new age is coming. Cos: who usually shy away from colour and stick to the conservative approach has, to my surprise, even started to dabble in the stuff.

I’m afraid of colour, as are most British people. Unfortunately, as reliable as each Monday morning, you can bank on colour every spring. Usually, I only have to really prepare for a palette of cheery pastels. This year is different, though. Colour is back with a vengeance and I’ve got to face up to a riot of layered, clashing, bright digital prints like nothing seen before.

This sudden flurry of colour and rapid spread of busy prints is largely the result of advances in digital photography. Bold floral photographic images and hyper digital printing techniques have spread to major fashion houses like wildfire. It’s a completely different language and it’s all coming from the computer.

If garish colours, offbeat materials and pixelated patterns are firm features of Spring/Summer 2012 already, then Peter Pilotto are undisputed ringleaders (and yes it is plural, they’re two designers called Peter Pilotto and Christopher de Vos). Blissfully wedded to their MACs, they are the new magicians leading this wave, abracadabraing an array of oh so meticulously mismatched patterns.  Dunked in glowing shades and shrouded in trimmings, their Spring/Summer 2012 collection with its slightly cyber distortion, made for an otherworldly, Avatar-like brilliance.

Models appeared from backstage in what looked like wetsuit dresses; very power-hungry looking things, with a nod to the 80’s (I think it was the shapes of the shoulders and perhaps the disco colours). The skin-tight, scale-like print was uncanny; so convincing that the models looked like reptile amphibians, especially given the wet-slicked back hair, cocoon-ish shapes and various layers of fabric hanging from them like shedded skin.

More arresting still were the surging skirts and bulky lower body dresses – silhouettes that just a season ago seemed untenable. Another new style of dress to rear its head was the swimsuit come puffy prom dress; its upper body is super tight, with a criss-cross pattern hugging the chest; the lower part poofs out into a full bodied, full on 50’s skirt. Watch this space – this and the wetsuit dress are the new dresses coming of age.

Again, and not surprisingly, there’s something about Mary (Katrantzou) this season. We’d already heard through the grapevine she’d been swimming in pixels all summer and hearsay proved spot on. A snapshot of her collection has you soaring into the infinitely fluid medium of computer-generated colour and before you know it you’re drowning in a world of print.  Whereas the lampshade and fishbowl skirts from her last two collections were close to becoming her signature style, it is now the colour and cut combined that make this collection so stunning.

It’s a firm shift away from the home furnishing theme and into something more abstract. By touching on the natural world, she has somehow managed to turn it into the supernatural. “Man meets machines meets mother earth, an army of petal, metal, print” is how she describes the collection. But it isn’t chaotic. None of this season is that. No, this is exquisite. Planned and printed to perfection.

On the runway, her girls stomped to a tribal beat, and they looked like castaway, shipwrecked creatures from a different world. Immaculately dressed though, with tousled hair and uniform space-age lipstick, these girls got better and better with every outfit. I don’t do print and I loved it. I don’t like colour and I fell for it. Of course, we still had the neatly fitted cocktail dresses, but these signature pieces were different: stronger, with prints popping up everywhere and stiffened, sculpted shapes jutting in every direction.

The most memorable moment had to be her trouser suits: these grew up the body from pink around the knees, through to yellow, then orange, ending with blue resting on the shoulders. They harkened back to Kane’s Spring Sumer 2011 “Princess Margaret on Acid” collection with their mesmerizing, psychedelic flower-power print. And it dawned on me: so Kane was the pop pioneer of fluoro fashion. In hindsight, I should have guessed we were looking at a very particular and uncompromising vision of the future. He’s always been a game changer, often taking things in a radically different direction and introducing challenging (i.e. unappealing) trends that somehow he churns into seriously covetable items. A year on, the fluoro lace, futuristic textures and tribal undertones on ladylike shapes are back. And now, everyone is tuning in too.

Seeing this trend take off and admiring it from afar is one thing though; being able to incorporate them into my wardrobe and daily life is another. I’m tentative but increasingly open to the idea of colourful print. I’ve already started to look to the high-street for alternatives. Check out Whistles with their wild meadow yellow dress, Reiss’ bodycon balbina or Topshop’s mermaid slip. I’m planning to get the fuchsia pink cropped hooded scuba jacket from Cos. You could almost say I’m converted.

If you’d like to follow suit, the key is to sport a mash up of texture and colour which has been strictly neatened into a tight silhouette. The mind-boggling, wild, surreal prints of lava, magnified fish scales and broiling surf will speak well enough for you. Mother Earth meets the new futuristic, utopian age of digital printing: 2012 and beyond, say hello to the new black (yikes!).