Minimidimaxi Magazine

Anyone familiar with Ula Zukowska’s iconoclastic designs knows that her world is both wearable and breathtakingly unusual, and the Fall 2005 collection ranks among the designer’s best.

There’s no point in calling Ula’s designs futuristic because she proves that the future is now. It’s an act of time travel to see 20’s Parisian cloche hats (by headwear designer Lucia Bochow) on dour-faced models wearing her space-age designs, always two steps ahead of culturally acceptable modernity.

For those crinko-philes who won’t wear anything unless it’s got more wrinkles than grandma, Ula has an unpretentious pink skirt, a chaotically-wrinkled sangria dress and other pieces in lightweight but resilient microfibres, beloved Tyvek included. Little pockets line a number of layered organza tops and skirts, often holding nothing more than mystery. The layered, unravelling and distressed skirts are works of subversive art.

Of course there are those beautiful, bountiful greens. The depth-creating effect of a graded green caftan/jacket illustrates her deft use of colour and the spatial awareness that gives her clothing an illusory mien. Touches of shimmering gold parries the modern glam sensibility that Jean-Paul Gaultier parades for Fall 2005.

Favourites are the raw-cut emerald shearling jacket with prehistoric metal buttons, a stone-age beauty that proves that when concocting a collection, Ula steps out of her time machine whenever the whim strikes her.

Daniel Cox, Fashion Editor
Marek Wlazlo, Photographer