Markarian Pre-fall 2024
Markarian designer Alexandra O’Neill and her mom traveled through South Africa and Botswana on a safari for the first time this fall. The trip made her reminisce about the idea of seeing something for the first time, “being an outsider and experiencing that landscape,” she said.
“It made me think of [Henri] Rousseau, and how he painted these quirky jungle landscapes. He painted them even though he had never been out of Paris. When he was painting, he threw together all of these different flora and fauna that didn’t actually belong together — flowers from different places of the world and throw them together. It was kind of this quirky take on traveling, but also being an outsider and being out of your comfort zone,” she said.
More from WWD
O’Neill applied the concept to her pre-fall collection by melding her own flora and fauna, mixing tiger print (a nod to Rousseau’s “Tiger in the Tropical Storm” painting) and safari-reminiscent embossed crocs with a rich meld of florals and a sunrise-to-sunset palette (a nod to watching crocodiles and hippos along the river). The idea was prevalent across signature occasionwear in floral ikat, jacquards and brocades, like a beautiful rich yellow Apple dress or matching Gita mini with bow-adorned shoulders and train.
To pack the punch of her inspiration, O’Neill tapped Michael Putnam, founder of Putnam Florals, to design beautiful on-site floral arrangements for her collection lookbook.
“We’re always going to lean more toward partywear and event dressing, because it’s what I love to do and it’s how we started. We’re staying true to that, but we did work in some pieces that can be worn during the day,” she said of daywear, like a white cotton dress, outerwear (two fluffy tiger-stripe numbers or rounded and cropped croc leather jackets) and mock-neck blouses tucked into high-waist croc-embossed pencil skirts.
Launch Gallery: Markarian Pre-Fall 2024
Best of WWD
