Emotion, warmth, instinct, and a will to affirm presence through what one wears: clothes suited for this moment.
Determined to bring to the outside world the comfort and the ease that have become bywords of mainly dressing for indoors, yet willing to delve into design and fabrication to offer pieces that feel special and personal, Artistic Director Karl Templer devises with the Ports design team a collection that explores the tension between function and desirability.
In the year that marks Ports’ sixtieth anniversary, Templer looks at a certain kind of elegance, at the cocooning shapes, the properness and even the outsized decorative buttons of the origins and projects it all into a new era, rediscovering along the way timeless gestures such as wrapping, or the primeval caress of a shaggy texture.
Everything is intensely tactile, enticing the senses, pleasing the body, freeing the movements. Knitwear captures the quest for ease in a protective embrace: a jumper in wool braided with leather; hairy tufts growing all over a welcoming coat, a ribbed skirt draped over the hips. A grammar of feminine shapes unfolds in an evolutionary tension between the softness of draping and the sharpness of tailoring, between neat profiles and twisting and folding. The act of wrapping suggests ways to construct pieces, while graphic prints highlight it. Touches of faux fur add further tactility. Leather is slick. Every item stands as a statement. Sculptural coats that unbutton on the back; flowing trench coats; folded dresses; jumpers as thick as outerwear. Tight leather boots have butterfly heels highlighted by thin buckled straps. Streamlined jewellery and double aspect bags edged in faux fur polish the look off. A celebration of fashion as essential rather than frivolous, that feels instinctual and personal.
