Nature meets geometry. The organic fuses with the modern.  Sinuous shapes merge with graphic lines in the Sassoon Geoganic collection. This is a new aesthetic recently revealed in the post millennium design of Ron Arad’s Ripple chair and the interiors of Jamie Hayon - an aesthetic that owes it’s innovation to the Secessionist artists of early twentieth century Vienna.

In 1903 the city became a hotbed of creative innovation as painters Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele and Wiener Werkstaette designers Josef Hoffmann and Kolomon Moser led a style revolution.  Art Nouveau was combined with Modernism to create a new aesthetic - organic modernism. Klimt painted the primal force of sexual attraction in canvases lavishly embellished with gold leaf featuring seductive wraiths with porcelain skin and berry stained lips.

Sassoon’s new collection uses the concept of organic modernism to create a series of shapes that are diametrically cut with L shaped layering and reversed graduation techniques to create paradoxically oppositional effects. International Creative Director Mark Hayes says ‘We’re finding ways to create shapes that are geometric when flat and when ruffled have volume in unexpected ways.’

Colour is geo-ganic, the abstract squares, sinuous lines and L shapes used as decorative devices in the work of Klimt and Egon Schiele are transcribed into subtly toned sections of related colours such as cyclamen, violet and mulberry - then accented with a vibrant flash of belladonna. Gold and coral with a flash of emerald green recall the colours of a silk kimono falling from a model’s body caught on canvas by Egon Schiele.