
Fashion
Dion Lee's Baroque Grunge Paradise
Story by Kristen Bateman / Photography by Andrew Boyle
11 February 2019
For fall 2019, Australian designer Dion Lee presented a collection full of oppositions. Baroque and grunge, corsets and carpenter pants. Lee typically sticks to neutral color palettes, and this season was no exception: but with details like feathers and architectural silhouettes, everything felt coordinated. Here's everything you need to know about the show.
The main starting point for the collection was the corset. Lee used a simple corset shape under blazers and over button-downs to manipulate the body in interesting ways. The designer also used elements from the corset to shift and shape dresses and complicated sweaters.
Following the recent trend of elbow-length opera gloves on the runway, Dion Lee showed a couple of different examples of this that matched the dresses in the collection. Will opera gloves thrive in real life once all the fashion shows end and fall rolls around? Only time will tell.
Feathers were the defining motif that felt a bit abstract in nature, but nonetheless, added textural interest to the collection. In the context of tightly wound corsets, marabou trim felt modern.
Dion Lee has become well-known for dresses with strategically placed cut-outs. This season, the label presented a bevy of dresses, sweaters and tops that seemed to use the structure of the corset to remap new cut-outs that were somehow both wearable and risqué.
For the first time, Dion Lee debuted a leather accessories capsule. Dainty leather bags in a sea of neutral hues felt particularly strong next to silky dresses and feminine corset dressing.
Photography: Andrew Boyle