How do you select your colour palette? We love colour and our clients love colour. We love sophisticated colour combinations. I particularly love combining anything and everything with oxblood and jade and navy.
At your 40th year in fashion celebration you said you were celebrating Leopard Frock, not Marianne Fassler. How has the studio evolved in recent years? I celebrate team Leopard Frock, but Leopard Frock assure me that they are celebrating Marianne Fassler – in the words of Lezanne Viviers. I don’t work in a vacuum. I always consult, question and affirm – that is my creative process.
The guests at your celebration were a younger crowd than I am used to seeing at your shows. Would you say Leopard Frock has found a new audience? Social media is very important to the visibility of any fashion brand. If a brand wants to be relevant to a new generation, it should be active on many levels of communication. Marianne Fassler is a brand that stands for disruption, creativity, crafting, and credibility. Many of our clients align with the Fassler lifestyle, intellect, opinion and affinity. It attracts an art audience, a sophisticated fashion audience, and many beautiful real women who want to communicate who they are and what they stand for – whatever age. Of course, I honour the clients who have been loyal to the brand over many decades, but I also enjoy the aspirational side of the business. Our brand would stagnate if we matured with our clients! Great fashion should be ageless and timeless, yet totally fresh and contemporary. Remember, my mother still wears Fassler at 93!
Are you designing with a new woman in mind? I design for women: The powerful ones, the confident ones, the constant ones, the mothers, the lovers, the leaders.
You sometimes make a political statement through your work - I didn’t pick one up this time. Is there nothing left to say? I make statements on a public platform. This was a personal celebration in the inner sanctum. There is always something to say.
Forty years of Fassler Fabulous
Marianne Fassler AKA Leopard Frock celebrates 40 years as one of South Africa’s fashion icons this year. We spoke to her about the milestone and her AW17 collection
What inspired your AW17 collection? Also the collection that marks 40 years of Fassler in fashion? We wanted to re-visit themes from our archive and disrupt preconceptions around the use of leopard, tartan and spots – recurring themes throughout my 40 year career.
There are a lot of wide pants, long coats and long coats in this collection - what inspired this silhouette? Trench coats and palazzo pants – these are eternal staples.
Dots and checks, pink and green, skins and sequins - the eclectic mix is your design signature. How do you make it fresh every time? It’s about pattern disruption with a focus on hand craft techniques. Making it fresh? Thanks for the compliment. We just always look afresh at the silhouette and the fabrics at hand. We never revert to the obvious or the easy solutions.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Some images from Fasslers AW17 lookbook:
How do you select your colour palette? We love colour and our clients love colour. We love sophisticated colour combinations. I particularly love combining anything and everything with oxblood and jade and navy.
At your 40th year in fashion celebration you said you were celebrating Leopard Frock, not Marianne Fassler. How has the studio evolved in recent years? I celebrate team Leopard Frock, but Leopard Frock assure me that they are celebrating Marianne Fassler – in the words of Lezanne Viviers. I don’t work in a vacuum. I always consult, question and affirm – that is my creative process.
The guests at your celebration were a younger crowd than I am used to seeing at your shows. Would you say Leopard Frock has found a new audience? Social media is very important to the visibility of any fashion brand. If a brand wants to be relevant to a new generation, it should be active on many levels of communication. Marianne Fassler is a brand that stands for disruption, creativity, crafting, and credibility. Many of our clients align with the Fassler lifestyle, intellect, opinion and affinity. It attracts an art audience, a sophisticated fashion audience, and many beautiful real women who want to communicate who they are and what they stand for – whatever age. Of course, I honour the clients who have been loyal to the brand over many decades, but I also enjoy the aspirational side of the business. Our brand would stagnate if we matured with our clients! Great fashion should be ageless and timeless, yet totally fresh and contemporary. Remember, my mother still wears Fassler at 93!
Are you designing with a new woman in mind? I design for women: The powerful ones, the confident ones, the constant ones, the mothers, the lovers, the leaders.
You sometimes make a political statement through your work - I didn’t pick one up this time. Is there nothing left to say? I make statements on a public platform. This was a personal celebration in the inner sanctum. There is always something to say.