Substitute “he” or “they” for “she” in ZZ Top’s famous lyrics—“She got legs / She knows how to use them”—and you come directly to one of Stefano Pilati’s preoccupations for his fall 2024 Random Identities collection. Gams, pins, sticks…call them what you will, but they’re on show in the designer’s interpretation of formal, skin-baring Bermuda-ish shorts.
His hem-raising is the result, in part, of observing what’s happening on the street: “A lot of young people right now, boys especially, want to show legs, which was something that only women did,” Pilati noted on a call. Then there’s an experience he had this summer: “I was invited to a party and I was on the phone with a friend of mine and I was like, ‘Are you wearing long or short?’” he related. “I found myself actually thinking like a woman would, should I wear a long dress or a short dress, no matter if it was evening or day. And that is something that stayed with me.”
Dark gray flannel shorts formed a suit with a wide, yet soft shouldered jacket gathered lushly at the back, a very ’80s shape that dovetails with Pilati’s New Romantic mood. That theme continued in a raglan-sleeved sweatshirt with elastic at the wrists and neck, creating delicate ruffles that wink at that British scene without lingering in the past. Pilati was busy discovering newness on the Emerald Isle; he enlisted Lux Gillespie to design the trompe l’oeil t-shirts. A t-shirt printed with a loose bow-tie was paired with a slim-line gray flannel suit with a gently curving narrow lapel and narrow, straight shoulders that were attached to the body with a pleat rather than the “usual padding.”
One of Pilati’s missions with Random Identities is to eschew gender normative binaries. At the same time the focus on craft and technique is absolute; a lot of thought goes into these designs, some of which carry symbolism. Take the low-waisted silhouette you can find on a belt-printed T-shirt and on a sweater with a belted drop waist. The double waist is something Pilati explored in his collaborative pre-fall line up for Fendi. His preoccupation with movement can ideologically be connected back to the Jazz Age, when drop-waist flapper dresses freed women’s legs long before minis did. A documentary on Mickey Mouse inspired a retro photo print (which Pilati says relates back to one he did of the crowd at Woodstock for a 2007 Yves Saint Laurent collection).
As to gesture, the tips of Pilati’s “pantoufle” shoes arch up toward the thigh; in contrast a collar is cut a bit lower so that it dips forward. A slender tip pocket fits a bank note and gets around fiddling with a wallet. At Random Identities, the pursuit of elegance is an open and shut case.
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