Port Eliot: Mary Katrantzou's dresses come home

School supplies, Ming vases, floral bouquets—they’re all fodder for Mary Katrantzou’s radical creativity. But it’s interior design that has served as one of the designer’s richest sources of inspiration, and this weekend, Katrantzou will reunite a triptych of dresses inspired by the Port Eliot house with its point of origin.

The dresses, originally created and displayed as part of the 2011 Port Eliot Festival, feature excerpts from the exhaustive photographs of decorative details Katrantzou snapped during her first visit to the centuries-old stately home.

‘The inspiration was endless,’ she told us last summer. ‘I probably took about 1,000 photos, and there were so many treasures in every one. Every single room we did, every corner, was stunning. I told Cathy [Catherine St Germans, festival founder] that we could create an army of dresses.’

Sarah Mower, the British Fashion Council's ambassador for emerging talent, was certain Katrantzou’s approach would make a perfect fit for the festival when she began planning the fashion programme last year.

‘I knew Mary had done at least two collections based on interiors, houses and objets d’art,’ she told us on Wednesday. ‘I knew that she would enjoy coming down here—everywhere you look, there are the most incredible things to be discovered.’

The dresses use Katrantzou’s signature hyperrealistic printing technique to unify images drawn from across the house’s 100 rooms. Chandeliers, desks and family photographs all appear, prompting more than a few visitors who viewed the dresses in the house last summer to make ‘I just saw that table!’-style exclamations.

Katrantzou couldn’t attend last summer’s festival, so