Perhaps it was the two hares—one black, one white—who hopped here and there amid the strawberries, snails, whippets, poultry, poppies, and foxgloves that contributed to the borderline psychedelic rural richness of this collection’s decorative catalog. Perhaps it was the color story of Wedgwood blue strafed by white ruffles and pleated bibs. Or maybe it was just the designer’s name. Whatever the reason, these clothes sometimes reminded of Alice in Wonderland.
Temperley is a West Country woman, and here she harvested a concentrated bounty of Somerset source material. A flute-neck dress of hammered satin bled the monochrome relief of Sebright feathers into the scarlet curl of poppy petals. Other breeds of poultry lent their plumage to loose woollen Guernsey turtlenecks and embroidery reliefs that riffed against the designer’s regularly returned-to latticing. That blue apart, color stories of dusky pink, golden flax, and black dominated a daywear section that mixed throat-tied floaty tulle and taffeta dresses for barefoot meadow walking; fitted trompe l’oeil knits; and drill tailoring peppered with poppy embroideries that included a new-silhouette, high-waisted jodhpur fitted with leather-edged suspenders, matched with a frilled, pleat-bibbed shirt and a two-button collarless double-breasted overcoat.
The evening section featured two unmissable wide-leg sequined jumpsuits with chest pieces of hand-stitched wool and pin florals and hummingbirds; tulle dresses with a Hitchcock-concentration of darting and Swarovski-detailed swallows; and featherlight, feather-patterned ruffle-neck metallic fil coupe dresses in arcs of russet and gold. One standout fitted frock blended panels of golden sequins, white tulle, and golden lace garlanded with poppy and foxglove. Another, restrained by comparison, contrasted panels of silk georgette and spotted tulle with sparkling embroideries of snails and shining trails. This was pastoral-touched, folkie-intense partywear for authors of their own center-of-attention wonderlands.
