'HAPPINESS GONE WRONG' - EFTYCHIA SS22
EFTYCHIA’s latest creative output, her ‘HAPPINESS GONE WRONG’ SS22 collection, shows what happens when the distortion in our lives is sourced to reinvent the past into something fresh and exciting. This EFTYCHIA season signalled the arrival of a reinvented professional woman, someone who is evidently versed in combining work with pleasure. The looks of the collection introduced nonconventional cuts and punk-rock references: glitter skirts, leather vests, fraying and fringing, and a more vibrant colour palette compared to her previous AW21 collection, which was much more restrained and conservative. This is not to say that the new EFTYCHIA woman lacks self-composure, on the contrary: she is able to masterfully convert the notion into sheer effortless cool, underlined in the loosely-fitted silhouettes, low-waisted at the bottoms and slightly oversized at the top. Freedom of mobility without compromising on the blunt beauty of her tailoring.
The music selected for the catwalk was both eerie and uplifting, an ambiguity which transpired into the clothes themselves. It transported us into a liminal space, between a past and a future self, both pre and post pandemic. Here, classic elements of previous collections were retained, such as the ultra popular ‘Grandpa trousers’, however they were given a notably more audacious twist in this latest apparition, by rendering them shorter into Bermuda-style and pairing them with almost translucently coloured, V-necked shirts. My personal favourites were the pair cut from leather, which kicked off the presentation.
Going back to the wider structure of the show, the set design included two sculptures, mounted on stone, which the models used as navigational points in the space. There was a 3D representation of a print depicting an axe inside a heavy rock formation, titled ‘Ice Pick’ which could also be found on one of the long sleeved tops presented in the collection. The parallel referencing between elements of the external and the final pieces themselves showed a special attunement to the current environment, in particular the danger we are all facing climate-wise, and subsequently the desire to dig deeper into our relationship with Mother Earth. While the collaboration with Vanessa Schindler’s Bioresin and chain jewellery pieces, and Simona Vanth’s sculptural clogs did a fabulous job to highlight the latter sentiment, the 80s punk inspired hair and make up starkly projected the former.
The second sculpture was a digital screen displaying the message ‘LIVE.LAUGH.LOBOTOMY’ which again resounded the arch-message of the show ‘HAPPINESS GONE WRONG’. The title is a play on the eponymous name of the brand ‘EFTYCHIA’ (Greek for the word ‘happiness’) as a critique on the pressure to simply carry on ‘business as usual’. Especially for the ‘girl bosses’ of a still predominantly hetero-masculine political and financial world, the expectation is to tackle any sort of challenge with a smile on our faces, assuming a false kind of serenity, in order not to be labelled as ‘bossy bitches’. In riposte to that, EFTYCHIA’s tongue in cheek business-wear demonstrates that being feminine and delicate also means having a razor-sharp edge.
Edited by Bo Nguyen, Fashion Editor
