London has a thing for upstarts. From the roundheads to the rioters, civil disobedience and the old ‘up-yours-sir!’ is as much a part of the city as gum-pocked pavements, night buses and blue skies (just kidding). The spirit of defiance is most visible in the capital’s sartorial choices. Over London Fashion Week the Sleek team saw blue metallic tailoring, an all-green, reptile-inspired ensemble, sequinned Ugg boots and rainbow-flecked hair. And that was just on the high street.
Londoners are proud of their edge and the creative flair that is fostered here (nowhere more famously than in the hallowed halls of Central St Martins). One such native band of outsiders (via Macedonia and Japan) are Marjan Pejoski, Sasko Bezovski and Koji Maruyama, the principal constituents of KTZ.
Unlike the swathe of meteoric bursts to prominence from St Martins grads of more recent years (Christopher Kane, Mary Katranzou, Meadham Kirchoff, Mark Fast; at times it felt like the whole roster of London Fashion Week was a CSM marketing gimmick), fellow alumnus Pejoski has been steadily cultivating the brand’s vanguard stance since the ‘90s (and was notably responsible for Björk’s swan dress, #culturaltouchstone right there). The original Greek street boutique, Kokon to Zai, was started as a creative bridge between music and fashion; stocking Marjan Pejoski’s own main line, KTZ and the graduate collections of other promising young designers including Gareth Pugh, Jeremy Scott, Raf Simmons and Emma Cook.
This year’s Autumn-Winter women’s ready-to-wear collection was inspired by the Occult and the tarot deck, or Marjor Arcana. Head designer Koji Maruyama told Sleek he was inspired by a deck he has owned since childhood.
“It’s quite direct but it’s from this tarot pack that I have been using since I was 11, which I still have. I have been really interested in symbolism for a while now, probably since school, but AW13 really started with this William Blake illustrated tarot card that I found during the design process for the SS13 women’s collection”
From the hanged man to the lovers, death and temperance, the devil and the hierophant; KTZ presented a dark, theatrical collection typically dripping with symbolism in a palette of fabrics running through leather, wool and PVC to chenille, silks, lamé and organza. The girls could have marched straight out of the restricted section of the library to pounding Diplo (a characteristic KTZ flourish); a coven of streetwise Satanists.
“While I was working on this collection I also saw the Kenneth Anger exhibition in Paris…such beautiful, magical visuals. Then suddenly all my friends were into tarot cards and started using them everyday! That made me feel very sure about my direction. All of the working process became so real.”
The pieces struck a stark contrast to an ephemeral but striking Spring-Summer, a pale haze of wispy lace, embroidered PVC and iridescents. This time around we saw bold balloon coats in scarlet and foil gold, cloven boots, acid-western, El Topo-style brimmed hats and adaptive geometric prints that popped with tessellating arabesques, Greek keys and frets. One of the more robust looks included an embroidered shearling jumper dress with matching thigh-highs, vinyl gloves and horned tortoiseshell glasses, incorporating perhaps the strongest aspect of the collection; the Gothic serif type and Roman numeral motif. Slogans like Death, Magician and Golden Dawn were embroidered flush down sleeves, legs, collars and one right shirt breast; street-wear for the club-kid children of Aleister Crowley.
Fringing, highwayman’s boots and vast-brimmed hats leant an additional taste of the wild west, a flavour more Jodorowsky than John Wayne in keeping with the swarthy theme.
“What I really like about this theme is that people can relate to it in so many different ways. I ‘ve never seen El Topo or Holy Mountain (I think Marjan has) but I love it that you picked up on that. I totally love it when people have completely different views of the collection! That really excites me and it’s why I want to keep using visually-laden symbols in the collection, they become so personal.”
Producing eclectic but wearable fashion is an old London trick, but staying relevant after over a decade in an industry so bewitched with neoteric flourish and the currency of hype is perhaps the most impressive sorcery of all. And that ace card belongs to KTZ.
Text by Ella Plevin
More on the occult and an interview with Kenneth Anger can be found in the upcoming Spring issue of Sleek.