Pairing fluid silks with military-inspired coats and perfect detailing, mat with luminous textures, the Croatian-born Damir Doma on Wednesday sent out a spring look billed as an experiment in "collage".
"I wanted a collection full of power," the designer, better known for loose, flowing silhouettes, explained backstage on day two of Paris Fashion Week.
"This season is a very urban person, a very confident, precise and structured human."
The German-raised, Paris-based designer, who just opened his first own-name store in the capital, edited his palette right down, working with blacks, navies and white, lifted by panes of olive, splashes of turquoise, sapphire and rust.
On the technical side, many of the pieces were cut up and reassembled, collage-style, with tops becoming bottoms and vice versa, he explained.
High-waisted skirts and pants, for instance, had large drawstring pleats at the waist, initially part of a bag design, held up by utilitarian-style braces.
Many pieces played on masculine-feminine contrasts like boxy, wide bermuda pants in buttery tan leather, with matching sleeveless tunic, modelled with hands thrust into deep pockets.
Likewise, a pair of black shorts and wraparound jacket offered a rich contrast of textures, with backs in mat, papery silk, and fronts in lustrous leather. Desert pants in billowing blue silk were paired with a structured white jacket.
Yet others were sweetly feminine, like wispy little silk dresses circled by wide belts beneath the ribs, or a flimsy short white skirt with thicker folds wrapping apron-like round each side to the front.
