Conceptual thinking has always been one of Marjan Pejoski’s strong suits – the skill to coherently sketch and meticulously execute a vision of dress, admittedly with varying degrees of wearability throughout the seasons. That’s why tribal connotations, the idea of an off-mainstream-piste collectively shared consciousness, have never been far amongst his devotees. Whether “it all began in Africa” (S/S12) or New York’s underground club land of the early 1980s. His Spring / Summer 2016 collection for London-based cult favourite KTZ presented no exception in that respect. On the Sunday evening of London Fashion Week, 20th September, we were once again going to Sunday mass rather than your average big-brand navel-gazing. With the tents in Somerset House now permanently disassembled, long-standing gay club ‘XXL’ under Blackfriars’ arches served as the label’s presentation stage. Set up in a sequence of artificially lit, red demarcation gates and gateways reminiscent of construction sites, ‘derelict’ is a word that may have come to mind, which, however, couldn’t have been more remote with regard to the collection on show. All models donning ‘big hair, we fucking do care’ wigs, S/S16 was more than just a stunning exercise in retro futurism. One step back, a grand leap forward. Across a signature colour palette of monochrome black and white (with added cardboard beige), plenty of leathers, fishnets, metal and, well, cardboard, and with painstaking detailing and innovative fabric re-appropriation, this season’s KTZ catwalk was owned by confident women perfectly clad for modern-day combat. Thanks to the label’s strong auteurship, come spring, it shall be easy to spot a New Model Army amongst us.

DASH