Just listening to Sarah Burton’s field trip to Ireland sounded like poetry: Up to the Giant’s Causeway in the far North, where a 300-year-old family farm is the last to work with traditional flax and calico techniques, painting it with potato starch and decorating the surface with endangered flower specimens.
“What I love is that each one is different and has its own character. Every time we did it, it came out differently,” the designer said backstage, before she sent out her shapely, limpid dresses and the surprise of crisper linen tailoring offset by the stage set of pure, creamy white rolls of linen suspended overhead.
Even if I had not seen the series of mood boards with their views of Irish landscapes and intricate handwork, I would have felt the spirit of nature and the home-made expressed in the outfits. They were mostly in black and off-white, but with touches of blue and red patterns focused on disappearing floral species.
