PIERSATKINSON

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Piers Atkinson’s A/W ’11 collection isn’t a celebration of the Paris you reach via St. Pancras International or Stansted Airport. His latest is a nod to 1930s Paris – its heyday of tête-à- têtes in seedy back alleys, lovers on park benches at dusk, drag queens in late night cabarets. But it’s also a Paris that is, at its heart, like any big city – London, Berlin, New York – that draws the dreamers, the poets, artists and romantics out of the darkness of small towns and countryside to the light of its cafes, bars, clubs and theatres, to the heat of its vices, to the warmth of its conversations. The signature elements of Atkinson’s earlier seasons return, here transformed by the nocturnal, sodium glow of the city. Dark navy, grey and blacks preside, as does the gold of jewellery worn out on the town, the downy plumage of the showgirl, the veil of the femme fatale. Extravagance is moulded into the contours of the rive gauche, and glamour is having a tryst with vice (note those metal studs, now gold). To his trademark erotic Atkinson adds a hint of the narcotic: a lysergic squiggle of antennae jutting from a cloud of feathers; the dim luminescence of dark blue orchids – will-o-the-wisps to lure you back a century to some Parisian opium den. And, fittingly, last season’s ‘Dalston’ finds its mirror incarnation in this season’s title piece, in both humming neon lights and reflective gold.

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About the Designer

PIERSATKINSON's picture

Piers is based in London, United Kingdom. His collections are produced in United Kingdom.

Piers Atkinson has worn nearly as many hats as he’s made. Artist, illustrator, milliner, costume designer, party organiser, fashion editor, project manager – his creative energies only seem to be matched by an insatiable curiosity.
He grew up in Norfolk with three generations of women – his mother, herself a milliner; his sister Lucy, the long-suffering photographic model for his teenage reconstructions of Grace Jones and Art of Noise record covers; and his grandmother, the artist/writer/horticulturalist and illustrator Lesley Gordon, from whom he took his multi-disciplinary cue.
Piers has had many great influences down the line, from his mother the theatrical milliner Hilary Elliott, at whose knee he learned hat-making, to Stephen Jones, who paid a brief but memorable visit to his grad show at University of Bristol, where he studied graphic design and photography.
Moving to London in 1995, he helped out at that year’s Alternative Miss World, the brainchild of artist Andrew Logan, now an occasional collaborator but constant inspiration to Piers: ‘He helped me see the rich possibilities of free-form events and a ‘just do it’ attitude.’ Much of which, it should be pointed out, could be seen in the successful Show-Off nightclub events that Piers co-created from 1999 to 2001. He also showed a range of his idiosyncratic and charmingly anachronistic character sketches in a joint exhibition, which included Logan, in 2002, and the Maria Chen curated Oki-Ni exhibition in 2004.
In 1999, Piers started with iconic fashion designer Zandra Rhodes, who he assisted with art direction and in-house PR. ‘She instantly cured my conservative approach to colour!’ says Piers. When Rhodes became a client of PR powerhouse Mandi Lennard, Piers took a post there assisting Mandi, who gave him many of her unique insights into the fashion world. After a similar stint at Blow PR, he joined Disorder Magazine as fashion editor for a shelf-full of issues. It was in this capacity that he proposed a newspaper for Graduate Fashion Week, featuring a star column by the Daily Telegraph’s fashion director, Hilary Alexander. This later led to Piers proposing and creating the daily for London Fashion Week (scouting Jenny Dyson of Teen Vogue as co-editor), an intense and rewarding experience. One of the rewards was the small range of hats he created during this time to ‘let off steam’ – a range that became his debut collection. He has since collaborated with designers Ashish, J Maskrey and Noki for runway presentations, has pieces in the V&A’s ‘Hats: an Anthology by Stephen Jones’, has dressed celebrities Lady Gaga and Christina Aguilera, Cate Blanchett in Vogue, Paloma Faith and Lily Allen, and is currently in talks with designers across the pond…
Piers also works as a trend consultant with major organisations and brands, teaches Fashion Illustration at The London College of Fashion, and continues to support new talent in the fashion industry in as many ways as he can.