SORAPOL wow with “Euphoria” S/S 2013 show in London

The brilliant minds behind cult London favourite SORAPOL – Sorapol Chawaphatnakul and creative director Daniel Lismore, beloved of Azealia Banks – showcased their SS13 collection last night and boy do these guys know how to put on a show! 

With Euphoria, the underground superstars reached a new creative crescendo in a show that was held fittingly in the seedily glamorous surrounds of a subterranean car park in London’s Soho. The collection celebrates London’s true anarchic spirit in an adage to the fallen bohemian girls epitomised by Edie Sedgwick. Models faux stumbled down a “cocaine” laced runway, vogueing and blowing air kisses whilst staring vacantly from behind artist Achraf Amiri’s ironically blank paper maché masks. 

The clothes themselves are theatrical, extravagant and visionary. Diaphanous flowing skirts billow away from structured corsets with intricate piping and patterning that showcases the label’s Thai heritage. The go-go girls of the 70s were referenced in gold hot-pants, bejewelled cropped tops and neon club-kid platforms alongside Leigh Bowery-esque dominatrixes in patent black leather and knee-high platform boots. One doll duo sported bowler hats, and pink and gold brocade jackets and the SORAPOL took the traditional court shoe shape of yore and created a thoroughly modern cyber shoe. The collection is testimony to SORAPOL’s ability to juxtapose colour, material, texture and style in an eccentric milieu that should not work, but at their hands ultimately becomes a vision.

For the first time, the label also presented menswear; all black fetishised looks not for the faint hearted and modelled by “it boy” Luke Worrall (a Bavarian boy lost at a fetish con), and author and artist Aiden Shaw (sporting neon green hair and beard in a futuristic fringe-sleeved jacket with the SORAPOL lion head on the back and latex trousers) no less. 

SORAPOL is fast becoming London’s answer to New York’s The Blonds, a celebrity go-to label for unique, one-of-a-kind creations such as the fishtail costumes they created for Ms Banks’ recent Mermaid Ball. Moreover, a SORAPOL show is much like that of a downtown NYC fashion show, with that same to-die-for vibe and edge meeting brave creative vision that is so rare to recreate in today’s age of sheepish conformity.

Beginning with a panther-headed motorbike revving down the catwalk, followed by stumbling “doll queen” models and look after look of avant-garde fashion, with a last look of a twin-bladed guitar dress in place of the traditional wedding dress, the show ended on a literal high with The Voice’s Vince Kidd strutting his stuff whilst belting out The Rolling Stones, surrounded by the phalanx of the final walk. Underground fashion at its best, as it was and as it should be.

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Ian Michael Turner

Photos: Martin Evans