David Koma. Fall 2024 - London Fashion Week.

(Images:  David Koma 2024)

There has been a trend that pokes through now and again, which is the hedonistic overtures of the 1970s and 1980s esque reflection.  And David Koma, the U.K. fashion designer, has been at the forefront of his devil-may-care cocktail dresses, thigh high slits, one pieces and sheer opulence, with his signature label. Offering very much a recognizable imprint on the said trend.  

There is no denying the turmoil of our world, from wars, climate change, with economic and political dark clouds looming.  It is a constant reminder that humanity lives within the unpredictable.  And while the 2020 pandemic has seemingly abated, it has left a society in disarray.   Everything has been effected, including the creatives, who in turn have impacted the Fashion industry; seen as a visual representation of current societal aesthetics.  However, it does feel there is an aura of confusion and misalignment within this visualization.  

Which leads me to an overall observation that a so-called counterculture remains very much elusive.  As things are indeed changing in a dramatic manner, yet there has been no heed or call for widespread change.  Which originates from the youth more times than not, yet there really isn't anything on the horizon.  And a banner or hashtag will not do. Instead what has been entrenched over Two decades, and I use this term as a metaphor, has been a mortgage boom and (it was once DVD players) now it's netflix and those feigned hopes of celebritydom.  At least the 1960s back-lashed successfully against 1950s conservatism and a Cold War with all of its thermonuclear annihilation, the 1970s carried on and gave us creative hedonism, while the 1980s maintained this throughout its decade, it wasn't until the dawn of the digital age, the 1990s and 2000s, where everybody could become a entrepreneur with masses of financial debt.  When it all started to etch itself back into that 50s idealism, where technology will set up free.   

Is David Koma assisting in heralding a possible counterculture?  Or is he at least offering a taste of that hedonism ala the 1970s and early to mid 1980s, in reminiscing that a possible Nuke missile strike from Russia could occur at any moment, while we partied at Studio 54 and danced into oblivion?  At least there was an honesty, rather than staring at a phone and receiving likes on Instagram from a 'bot' based in St Petersburg, in our strange new Cold War.  Hedonism, ironically has a knack of keeping the ego in check.  Yes, it is sex and death.  And one does not have to practice the esoteric for that deeper meditation.   Just look around.  There maybe no tomorrow. 

Koma's Fall 2024 collection held at the Royal Docks, for London Fashion Week fall very much, like his previous collections, within that epicurean manifestation.  His eros is alive and well, offering a sleeker and more tailored array.  Incorporating another era of the symbartic, that being the 1920s or more so the influential German Expressionism, as he noted for the Fall collection, seen as a mostly darkened stylizations caught between the shadows of black and white.  

From 70s and 80s cocktail dresses, mini skirts, and his quintessential thigh high slits.  Koma's allure of the sheer is also evident throughout his Fall collection, as is the 1920s inspired feathered hems, and tassels.  Yet, there is at times, intermixed with the carnal, a stoic defiance in its runway presence.  A rebellious and doomy prelude, to those dark clouds coming ever so closer.  

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(A.Glass 2024)