Addicted To Antik Batik

If you're even remotely into the haute bohemian gypset thing, then you probably are already a big fan of Antik Batik.  This French label by Italian-born designer Gabriella Cortese reflects her own love of travel, exotic destinations and the artful jet-set life.  Here are a few of my favorite pieces from the Spring/Summer 2013 collection.

About Antik Batik

(from the website)

• Gabriella has a spirit for travelling in her soul. Italian by birth and Parisian by adoption, she has crisscrossed the globe. Born in Turin, she enjoyed a well-behaved childhood there. Her Hungarian grandmother taught her how to embroider, while her mother embodied the model of eternal elegance.
  
  As an eighteen-year-old art student in search of freedom, Gabriella discovered Paris and its wild nightlife. Then, like the artists who went off to study the classics in the 19th century, she parted for Tibet, on trail of Alexandra David-Néel and the last of the psychedelic dandies on the Silk Road.
  
  In Bali, the thousand-year-old batik technique for printing silk inspired her to create her first range of pareos. Taking the word batik, Gabriella added antik “for the rhyme, and because it sounded good in all languages”.
   
  Having discovered India, she explored other techniques: embroidery, and bandhani: an artisanal dyeing process. In 1992, ANTIK BATIK was born.
  
  
  A traveler nostalgic for the times of cabin trunks, Gabriella invites us to go back in time with pictorial references from the beginning of the 20th century.
  
  
• From Art Nouveau she borrows its decorative extravagance. Lustrous decorations, stylized floral patterns and geometric prints inspired by the Russian avant-garde fill her creations with history. “I want to create the fashion of a voyager who plunges into the past and rediscovers treasures in an old trunk, pieces that evoke childhood memories and the parties of the Roaring Twenties.” The explosion of colors from the summer collections evoke the bohemian elegance of aristocrats such as Talitha Getty in Tangiers and Marisa Berenson in Ibiza at the end of the sixties.
  
  
  Married to the actor Marc Rioufol, and mother of little Nicola, Gabriella has been designing a children’s collection since 2001. Passionate about decorative arts, she also adapts the richly colored universe of ANTIK BATIK for home décor in partnership with home specialists. Sought after by celebrities and all women looking for authenticity, ANTIK BATIK has become an emblem of a bohemian-chic art of living.