Alessandro Dell’Acqua rummaged in his archive of vintage fashion magazines and found himself drawn to the glamorous looks from Italian couturiers of the 1980s —Pino Lancetti, Andrea Odicini, Sorelle Fontana, Mila Schön, a congregation now fallen into oblivion that at that time catered to the jet set and the well-heeled. He wasn’t driven by nostalgia though, rather by a desire for subversion. “I just followed an impulse to dismantle those bon-ton clichés”, he said. The collection was called Anarchic Glamour.
Dell’Acqua isn’t a subversive, yet he’s allergic to any restrictions of freedom, and what’s politically correct makes him cringe. His battle cry against today’s conformity and limitations was to flip the narrative and advocate for “liberty in non-libertarian times.” When the world seems to be closing in on us, he said, fashion has the expressive power to protest, disrupt, and somehow turn the tables. The secluded Haute Couture salons, sanctuaries of privilege, were metaphorically stormed with irreverence, and replaced by a modern take on their rarefied codes of passé sophistication.
Templates of bourgeois dressing such as le tailleur, the cocktail dress, the little black dress, the opera coat, the balmacaan, and the fur coat were given a humorous, cheeky spin. The classic chic black suit was dismembered into a small, almost diminutive embroidered jacket worn over a skirt reduced to two rectangular side-less panels barely kept together by thin technical ribbons. A two-piece ensemble à la Chanel was made from extra-thick, heavy bouclé tweed cut into a midriff-baring little jacket, paired with a matching midi skirt wrapped awkwardly around the hips; on an almost sarcastic note, a huge flat bow held together the plunging neckline of an otherwise monastic black double crêpe tunic. Elsewhere, a tight, sheer sequined pencil skirt peeked out incongruously from a chunky, roomy handcrafted Norwegian jumper. A miniskirt suit in faux-fur squirrel was so minuscule, it looked as if it were made for a leggy doll.
To emphasize the unconventional vibe, models of diverse genders were kept makeup-free, hair undone and shaggy, legs bare and occasionally unshaved. Sturdy brogues or pointy slingbacks were intricately laced up as sexy corsets. An air of “nihilistic eroticism,” slightly louche and walking the trashy-chic line, wafted over the collection. “I’ve played with the orthodoxy of glamour,” said Dell’Acqua, “I’ve tried my best to make glamour as unglamorous as possible.”
Source link
