Good taste? Bad taste? Post taste? Christopher Kane provokes these questions with his latest Resort offering

Good taste? Bad taste? Post taste? Those perennial questions which we ask ourselves every season, every fashion week and every day are challenged by Christopher Kane’s newest Resort offering.

Leopard print, neon and underwear as outwear are three style motifs usually reserved for the wardrobes of rowdy hen parties in Aiya Napa, but Christopher Kane’s Resort 2015 features all three in healthy measure.

“I often use neon as a sort of ‘palate cleanser,’” explains Kane. “Neon is one of our signatures and I return to it when I think other colours feel banal. Leopard is another signature – and one of the animals we always come back to. This Resort collection goes back to a lot of my preoccupations from my Saint Martins MA onwards. I go back to the MA collection to refresh how I feel about fashion and see what is possible; I often use it as inspiration: going back to go forwards.”

Kane’s signature leopard print is first seen in red and blue embossed separates while a canvas camel two-piece provides the most muted moments of a collection which quickly descends into a flurry of neon flower power. Black slips dresses and separates with neon yellow, green or pink netted accents featuring peek-a-boo panels, which reveal lace bra tops. While clashing neon leopard print trim explodes all over pleated skirts, leather jackets and skirts suits, moments which somehow transcend the bad taste category.

Nightwear inspired neon slips with lace trim perhaps tipping over into the bad taste classification of the collection literally rub shoulders with a chest-baring suit which introduces a clasp fastening masked with daisy chain detailing.

An it-shouldn’t-work-but-it-does appliqued lace body-con dress in a farrago of flower power neons contrasted with black provides the standout moment of the collection. Extreme, psychedelic and delightfully different, this one dress embodies the bad taste-good taste life force of Kane’s 2015 Resort collection.

A play on fabrics, techniques and a mix of trends which would surely be renounced as ‘bad taste’ were they handled by any other, Christopher Kane’s Resort 2015 collection serves as a burst of energy before he re-boots, resets and returns with a spring offering in September.

Enjoy it while you can.

Words: Josie Ayre