Charlotte Olympia’s Charlotte Dellal orchestrated an ultra-kitsch, Forties-esque performance with a Copacabana mood to showcase her spring collection.
“I’m a more-is-more person,” explained Dellal after the show, which she’d held in the grand, Art Deco ballroom of London’s Sheraton Grand Park Lane Hotel. “I wanted it to be fun, I wanted it to be a performance and I wanted people to feel like they’d stepped back in time for a moment.”
To do that, Dellal cast Bebel Gilberto as her Carmen Miranda figure, with models and showgirls walking out to the strains of Gilberto crooning Miranda songs. So the shoes were the star of the show, models wore breezy linen dresses and skirts, while the dancers were all in shimmering gold swimsuits.
As for Dellal’s shoes and accessories, they played into that tropical, South American mood. There were towering, wooden-heeled wedges embellished with clusters of plastic fruit, while flat, slip-on mules had green leather uppers fashioned in the shape of Monstera leaves. And the handbags were just as much a talking point as the shoes, as models toted leather banana and googly-eyed pineapple clutches, while a wicker basket was fashioned to resemble a slice of watermelon.
A finale of models dressed in giant fruit costumes — among them a strawberry, banana and pineapple — perfectly encapsulated the uplifting, cheeky appeal of Dellal’s collection.