Having recently drawn on the anthropomorphic sculptures of Isabelle Albuquerque, David Koma this season set his sights on a different kind of shape-shifting superwoman: the Bond girl. “She’s confident, empowering, and dangerous,” he said during a preview of his pre-fall collection in his Shoreditch studio. “Just like the Koma girl.” Between the graphic architecture of a little black dress and the liquid sequins of an almost-transparent gown, the designer burnished—when it would have been just as interesting to see him complicate—the femme fatale trope: a black widow weaponizing her powers of seduction with a come-hither gaze and a lethal touch.
Koma said he began by setting his design team three James Bond movies to watch, starting with 1995’s GoldenEye, in which Famke Janssen played a Soviet assassin called Xenia Onatopp. Her stealthy chic inspired patent, croc-embossed bodices and hip-jutting mini skirts, while 3D-printed enamel pebbles were hand-embroidered onto leather corsets and bags to mimic scales. The fiery red of the character’s Ferrari appears in hot bursts of color throughout the collection. Elsewhere, Jill St. John’s portrayal of Tiffany Case, a glamorous jewel smuggler in 1971’s Diamonds Are Forever, gave rise to stretch leather skirts, trench coats, and evening dresses scattered in rough-hewn crystals, while a liberal application of faux fur was a direct reference to the mink throw under which she seduced Mr. Bond. Then there was Grace Jones’s iconic turn as May Day in 1985’s A View To a Kill. She was the first Bond girl to have a direct hand in her own costumes and called on Azzedine Alaïa to create them. No guessing where the power-shouldered tailoring and waist-cinching biker jackets came from—even the geometric lines on tapered skirts and asymmetric mini dresses recalled her famously angular moves.
Constructed from bonded satin and velvet, those particular pieces were more lightweight than they looked. “I like that balance between drama and ease,” Koma said. “There needs to be a feeling of softness even in the sharp edges.” The designer worked through varying dichotomies of this nature. Precise tailored lines were squared against figure-hugging viscose jersey dresses; boned denim bustiers against tactile trims; tough leathers against clusters of translucent paillettes. The masculine was also juxtaposed against the ultra-femme. To wit: a double-denim look and bonnet-enveloping coat were reflected in Koma’s men’s line—just one page in the designer’s still-growing business portfolio. Not long after seeing Koma’s pre-fall collection, this reviewer bumped into him as he was embarking at Milano Linate. He’d been in town to put the final touches on his upcoming Blumarine runway debut. “I am sometimes tired,” he said. “But I am never stressed—and that’s a very, very important distinction.”
