Story and Photography by Stefhan Gordon of SHGfoto.com
This past Tuesday, upstairs at ConceptLA, at the historical Spring Arts Tower in Downtown LA John Sakalis present 16 looks from his most recent collection
The whole idea for John Sakalis's collection came after reading a book on Zelda Fitzgerald (Zelda by Nancy Milford); F Scott Fitzgerald's wife; and how she would dress and carry herself if she were alive today. She was a dancer, a poet, a flapper, quite beautiful, liked to drink, always wanted to be the star, but instead ended up living in her husband's shadow. Sakalis stated, " I ended up calling the collection, "The Legend of Zelda", I wanted to give her the spotlight and create a fictional story about her life. I wanted it to look heavy but exceedingly comfortable. Seamless but extremely constructed and provocative but not overtly sexual. I found an amazing brown wool boucle and used it as the main focus of the entire collection."The first look(below), the cowl neck lace top with the high waisted wool boucle skirt, and satin gloves with boucle trim, set the mood and the story for the collection.
Next came the brown lace with bronze metallic tinsel. Sakalis noted, " I kept it sheer but layered and draped it in a way so you got an ethereal feel but still had hints of skin tone underneath, as in the halter dress with draped hem."
From there the other pieces just started to fill in, like the nude silk jersey top and dress, the lilac angora and cashmere sweaters; both colors drawn from the degrade yarns in the boucle; started to make the collection completely cohesive to me and the story unfolded.
The short dress with the high collar and the folded and draped rosettes at the shoulder and back neck chain, was done to give a quiet unkempt, but delicate and strong feel. The lace leggings were to hint at a demure and strong woman not afraid of anything.
Sakalis said, "the finale dress [see below]was my favorite though. It had to be a strong standalone piece that made a statement, so I used the wool to construct a narrow body conscious silhouette that echoed the strength I tried to convey throughout. It was a fun collection to do and definitely one of my favorites I have ever done."
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