Kobi Halperin seems to have caught the Midas Touch while traveling around the ancient Greek city of Thessaloniki recently, as gold was applied in some manner to almost all of his fabrics this season.
During a preview at his showroom off Seventh Avenue, Halperin shared his obsession with the metal is nothing new. In fact, his final collection before graduating from Tel Aviv’s Shenkar university was entirely based around it.
Gold is a power color to him, something he shares with the many emperors of Thessaloniki who used it lavishly to decorate the city’s monuments during Byzantium. Closeups of their handiwork, like the Hagia Sophia’s gilded mosaic icons, translated nicely to tasseled goddess dresses, trendy maxi-length skirts and chic pajama separates in paisley or floral viscose with a lustrous, golden film printed overtop.
Open-weave knits were spun from cotton yarn and came embellished with tiny gold sequins or painted with gold foil. For these, Halperin said he tried to mimic the dullness of gold leaf that’s been slightly eroded because, “when it’s too shiny, it gets tacky.”
Gold was certainly the star here, but non-metallics had their moment, too, like the unfussy black and stone-colored linen separates with fawn embroideries taken from Grecian pottery, which were punched-up with blue as a nod to the Aegean Sea.
It all came together for the ideal capsule vacation wardrobe. “It’s basically a summer collection, but we’re calling it pre-fall,” Halperin said, adding these clothes won’t reach customers until the hottest months of the year when “you want something that’s very easy to wear.” Lucky for them, most come wrinkle-resistant and are therefore pack-and-go ready. “I’m trying to be as practical as possible, but still make it ‘fashion,’” he said.
