“One should resist tendencies, respect in any respect prices what one believes is legitimate for oneself, and domesticate what I’ve all the time outlined because the aristocratic style of not pleasing.” Massimo Alba opened his seasonal manifesto with a quote by the painter Balthus, though it appeared so becoming that one might imagine these have been the designer’s personal phrases. If coherence by no means misses Alba’s moodboard, freedom is what drives the ethos of the model. “The whole lot feels very unstructured and much from the physique, leaving a margin of house,” Alba mentioned. This mirrored his idea of respecting each completely different physique and granting a cushty type of carte blanche by way of styling choices.
Infused with handcrafted prints, the gathering was constructed on colours that interpreted the seasonality of garments and nature, muted through particular washes, largely in pure fibers. Linen was closely featured, as was hemp: “It’s a noble fiber with a richness to it, and a really specific contact,” mentioned Alba. “It’s also particular to me for what it has represented within the historical past of Italy and the world.” Finishing the gathering, a brand new costume named Ettore introduced some stiffness and construction, paired with boat footwear crafted as a restricted capsule by a Venetian artisan.
Continually evolving his relationship to the humanities and the written medium (the showroom was totally coated in paper cuts and extracts from books) the designer made a fanzine to visually current the brand new marketing campaign. “It’s a format that binds exactly to an thought of democracy, of one thing that may belong to everybody, that you may additionally discover on the streets,” mentioned Giacomo Cabrini, Alba’s content material supervisor and digital artwork director. Phrases are recurring parts in Alba’s world: they cowl mirrors, the again of shirts, and freshly added handkerchiefs.
