In this “winter of our discontent” many designers are pulling back from fantasy in favor of the pragmatic. Antonio Tarabini isn’t one of them. After designing for others for decades, during the pandemic he went solo, working with jersey to create non-gendered pieces that are modern in their body consciousness and also have a connection to classicism through his method of hands-on draping.
For fall, Tarabini was feeling the need to get out of his comfort zone. This was easier said than done; feeling his initial sketches fell short of the mark, he balled them up and threw them away. Then “one morning,” the designer related on a call, “I woke up and I found the little wrinkled sketch, it was so nice, so cute… I found it really real.” There’s a sense of freedom here; Tarabini followed a path that opened up for him, not one that he determined, and he credits his openness to doing so to John Galliano, with whom he worked at Christian Dior. “He was able to find magic things everywhere,” the designer said. “It’s important to find the beauty in something that you don’t imagine can be beautiful.”
There is much evidence that the flatness and filters are seeping from the digital realm into the physical one, and Tarabini responded to this by doubling down on materiality and expanding his vocabulary to incorporate more wovens and knitwear. He worked with fabric houses to create such marvels as a satin so fine that it is easily mistaken for plastic and a Japanese velvet so sheer it resembles a mesh. The designer said that these fragile-looking textiles are “very warm and soft.” A crinkled viscose that got a lot of play was reflective of our current state of being: as the designer put it, “we are living in a wrinkled world where everything is not perfect.”
To create a contrast he worked with a heavier jersey for fall, twisting and layering it in ways that were sometimes a bit complicated, but always unexpected and interesting. (Note the built in belts which allow the wearer to customize the fit and fall of the fabric.) The texture story carried over into knitwear; on a hanger a mauve V-neck with deliberate “runs” clustered together in a manner similar to a Fortuny Delphos dress. The silhouette was slightly looser than in seasons past.
It might take a minute for the eye to adjust to ATXV’s fall collection; there was a lot going on in terms of layering, texture, and transparency, but it’s worth the investment of time. These clothes were designed to have a bit of “wiggle room” in terms of fit, customization, and also imagination. “I think that to have something not perfect on you is cool, it breaks the rules and is something fresh that can open your mind and can make you feel different from the other people,” said Tarabini. “This concept for me is really important and is really what I’m feeling today; not hiding behind the perfection, but showing the imperfection and making it very, very beautiful.”
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