A little gasp escaped the crowd at Di Petsa’s Holy Milk show a few minutes before the finale, and it wasn’t because the very pregnant Leigh-Anne Pinnock (formerly of Little Mix) was squirting milk on the models from her wet-look bra. That came a little later. The reason behind the excitement was a trio of mesh dresses, digitally printed to look like Minoan flower frescoes, with quartz stones holding it all together at the bosom, and sheer slashes at the hips.
For Petsa, who has built her brand on wet-look dresses (a technique she developed as a student at Central Saint Martins), it was quite the departure. While the Minoan lines of the flowers weren’t exactly a new thing for the Greek designer whose models often walk bare breasted like women from that time, the whole thing felt pretty crisp.
“It’s a new era for me,” she said backstage. This season she found inspiration in her pregnant friends who, she felt, were transcending themselves and becoming something new in the process of becoming mothers. “I want to experiment and I want to give birth to myself again,” she added.
And so Petsa experimented, but cautiously. Besides the flowers, there was one more triptych that stood out too. Three draped mesh gowns with a sunset print almost acted as a prelude to the collection’s strongest and strangest point.
The rest of Holy Milk was classic Di Petsa: wet-look draping, mesh wires, frayed denim, and typographic prints on sheer gowns. It’s what the customers know and love, and makes up the foundation of her brand. It will be exciting to see how she builds from here.