Dioralop S/S'14 - The Clothes Maiden Magazine

Croatia – a nation renowned for its high adult literacy rates, breathtaking Baroque architecture and rich biodiversity – has now got an additional claim to fame.

Dioralop – based in the Croatian capital of Zagreb, and established by designer-architect duo Andreja Bistricic and Maja Merlic – occupies that elusive convergence point between ultra-androgynous, wholly womanly and ever-so-slightly epicene attire; this is a prevalent feature in all of the label’s womenswear collections to date, and is enriched by their latest collection’s focus on all the minutiae that makes good clothing, great.

As well as being all about the details – from isometric panelling and oversized fringing, to classic pocket accents – the Dioralop spring/summer 2014 collection is also all about the scintillatingly offbeat prints that helped them secure the Best Young Designers award at the 2012 Elle Croatia Style Awards.

Thus, it’s impossible to write about Dioralop without giving, at the very least, a passing mention to the label’s love and usage of Polaroids and prints: Bistricic and Merlic scan their chosen Polaroids in high resolution before getting them digitally printed in Scotland, resulting in inky, Polaroid-induced (hence the name “Dioralop”, which is Polaroid backwards) prints that evoke organised disorder and the 70s punk movement (a key inspiration to both Bistricic and Merlic, in addition to latter-day subcultures and street-fashion), as well as being quite deceptive (initially, you think you’re looking at a restricted palette of stone-washed greys, smudged blacks and chalky whites, but within these three central tones are – like in the iridescent, filmy skin of a bubble – a latent swathe of fluid, zingy shades waiting to be uncovered and appreciated).

In a recent interview with Push It magazine, the Dioralop duo describe Croatia as a “small market [that] hasn’t got a proper fashion scene”. This may be the case at present, but if Dioralop continue doing what they’re doing (namely, fusing Bistricic’s love of “cut and deconstruction” with Merlic’s love of “print and textile manipulation”), then Zagreb could soon be an emergent fashion capital; for much like their Berlin-based equivalent, JULIAANDBEN, Dioralop prove that fashion needn’t be fussy – nor conventionally “beautiful” – to have an impact at home, or away.

Tara Okeke

For more information, check out the Dioralop website.