From nurturing the Adelaide Fashion Festival in its infant years to showcasing her label Couture+Love+Madness at the Qingdao International Fashion Festival annually, the sky is the limit for Cristina Tridente.
She’s been an icon in the Adelaide fashion industry for many years now, with her creative designs pushing the limits in couture, constantly experimenting with textures, fabrics and embellishments to create garments unlike any we’ve seen before.
Designer Cristina Tridente (right) at the Lady Camellia runway
For the fashion-foward in Adelaide, a trip to Cristina’s studio is a must any time a high-fashion or formal event is approaching. But until January 18th, Couture+Love+Madness can be found at their stylish pop-up store in Rundle Place, displaying all the looks from the current collection ‘NuitNoire’ as well as selections from previous collections.
We quickly went past the pop-up shop to ask Cristina five questions in between her many client fittings and appointments over the silly season.
What’s your favourite type of material to work with?
It changes day-to-day! At the moment I’m loving scuba fabric or double foam mesh- they sew really well, you can create beautiful shapes from them and they can be left unhemmed as they don’t frey!
If you could ask your designer idol one question, who would it be and what would you ask?
Definitely Christian Dior, I am reading a book about him at the moment. He was the one who really revolutionised couture, the ‘New Look’ changed fashion forever and is still heavily used as inspiration today.
What’s your favourite summer trend this season?
I’m loving the off the shoulder trend, it is so elegant and feminine! I really don’t believe it will ever go out of fashion.
Which piece from your new collection are you most proud of?
My favourite piece from AW17 NuitNoire is the ‘Velvet Eyelet Dress’. It took over 50 hours to complete and contains three sizes of eyelets in different coloured metals. My dad actually put all the eyelets in after I purchased them all on my last trip to China so it was a real team effort.
What will we see you wearing this New Years Eve?
I’m not sure at this stage! Knowing me I will probably whip something up the night before as I did last year!
