How to translate the Victorian spirit that’s taken hold in European fashion for an Australian audience caught up in the sporty life? Karla Spetic’s whimsical collection posed a solution. All the signature cutouts, sheer tees, and side slits associated with athletic-chic were present, matched with girly frill collars, scalloped edges, and whimsical lavender prints.
Lavender, it seems, grows abundant in Dubrovnik, the designer’s Croatian hometown, and served as a starting point for the collection. Some of the sweetest pieces featured blown-up screen prints of the buds, magnified to look like science class projections, on slim skirts and as ruffle-trimmed rectangles placed at the center of pinafore tops like stamps on an envelope. That idea continued with photographic prints of the Dubrovnik seaside on white dresses. The biggest claim you could make against them is that they were a touch too quirky for their own good, but a little oddball flourish was welcome in Spetic’s just-left-of-center collection.
