Mary Katrantzou

Early life

Mary Katrantzou was born in Athens, Greece to an interior design mother and a father who trained in Textile Engineering.

Career

She moved to the United States in 2003 in order to attend Rhode Island School of Design to study architecture, but transferred to Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design where she completed both her Bachelor and Master's degree.

During her studies, she managed to sell some of her prints to Bill Blass. Graduating from her Bachelor course in 2005, Katrantzou switched her focus from prints for interiors to fashion prints. Whilst collaborating with Sophia Kokosalaki in 2006, Katrantzou managed to build up a portfolio for the Central Saint Martins Master Fashion Textiles course.

In 2008, she opened the Saint Martins graduating show. Her collection was nominated for the Harrods and the L‘Oreal Professional Award. Supported by a Newgen (talent identification scheme created by the British Fashion Council in 1993) sponsorship for six full seasons (S/S 2009 – A/W 2011), her first Prêt-à-porter collection was shown at the autumn/winter London Fashion Week in 2008.

Katrantzou's graduating show in 2008 mapped out her signature style. It was themed around trompe l'oeil prints of oversized jewellery featured on jersey-bonded dresses. These pieces created the illusion of wearing giant neckpieces that would be too heavy in reality. She also designed jewellery made out of wood and metal that were exact replicas of the prints. Mary Katrantzou's first ready-to-wear collection debuted at London fashion week in Spring/Summer 2009, with the support of the BFC and the New Gen scheme. Despite a small collection of nine dresses, Katrantzou picked up 15 stockists including Browns, Joyce and Colette. The designer achieved show status the following season, in Autumn/Winter 2009.

For her spring/summer 2011 collection Ceci n’est pas une chambre, a title inspired by Rene Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe, she challenged the viewer by printing on her designs fragments of images borrowed from old issues of Architectural Digest and World of Interiors. As she worked with volume, depth and perspective, the clothes acquired an engaging three-dimensional quality. “With digital printing you get that precision engineering where everything is marked around the body in a perfect way.”

Her collections are now sold worldwide in over 200 fashion shops, including Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, Barneys, Neiman Marcus, Colette, 10 Corso Como, Joyce, Luisa via roma, Mytheresa, Hiphunters, Stylebop, Opening Ceremony and Net a Porter, and in 47 countries. A collection for Topshop launched for London Fashion Week autumn/winter 2010 and was available in shops in February 2011 and sold out within the first few days of its release. Katrantzou‘s work has been featured in publications including Vogue, Dazed & Confused, and Grazia. In 2010, she was awarded the Swiss Textiles Award, succeeding Alexander Wang. She is one of the designers of Città dell'arte Fashion. Hannah Holman is one of the better known models who recently walked in one of Katrantzou‘s shows.

In November 2011 Mary was awarded the British Fashion Award for Emerging Talent: womenswear and in February 2012 was awarded Young Designer of the Year at the Elle Style Awards. February 2012 saw the release of her collaboration with Longchamp creating a capsule collection of their signature bags and totes. To promote them Vogue Japan gave away a plastic card case with Katrantzou's prints with their May issue. Three prints featured in this collaboration over several different shapes and sizes.

In April 2014 Mary announced she would be working with famous high street brand Adidas 'for the foreseeable future'. The collaboration will be on both clothing and footwear.

She also received the 2015 BFC/VogueDesigner Fashion Fund including a 12-month period of mentorship and a £200,000 grant.