Kobi Halperin traveled to India, specifically to the sacred city of Varanasi, famous for its funeral rites, for inspiration for his spring collection for Ungaro. Stimulated by the floral tributes he saw there, and indeed everywhere he traveled, he got to thinking about what they represented and equated it to one of his childhood fears — seeing his loved ones dying — as well as a more current fear of threats to craftsmanship and creative professions.
He thought up an imaginary garden — more on that later — for his craft-intensive collection, filled with floral embellishments and enhanced by a collaboration with accessories designer Deepa Gurnani, who created three-dimensional botanical motifs on head pieces and jewelry.
The explosion of flora was counterbalanced by more fitted silhouettes this season, with pencil skirts and shift dresses, for instance, worked in alongside the label’s satin and crêpe separates and pleated maxidresses. Multicolored and embellished technical lace was laid over a matching printed silk underlayer on a skirt, while a bronze tweed was interwoven with feathers and ribbons that gave a fur-like trim to its hem. Vivid fuchsia pink or green silks mingled with allover blossom prints, while lily patterns were printed after assembly onto pleated dresses, creating an effect of light, shadow and movement.
For his show video, Halperin confronted another of his fears, artificial intelligence, using it to create the lavish iconoclastic set he had imagined to show off his designs. Each real-life look was photographed, on real-life models and from a multitude of angles, before feeding the images into an AI program to create the video itself.
