Bodies and body-con with Marios Schwab

In the fourth and final talk in the series presented by ELLE and Swarovski, the Athens-born designer explained how his original ambition of becoming a ballet dancer and his interest in anatomy converge in his designs.

‘I am always very interested in revealing what we are trying to hide on the outside of the garment,’ he said, drawing inspiration from the absurd eroticism of Irina Ionesco’s photography and the laying-bare of anatomical structures in Andreas Vesalius’s medical illustrations.

The sculptural elements in his little black dresses that so entranced critics when he burst onto the London fashion scene were actually extensions of his studies of musculature and topography, he explained. In later seasons, he inverted the body-con concept by designing prints of abstracted muscles and blood vessels, rolling fabric – like skin – away to reveal a vivid under-print.

Anatomy has never been so stylish…