If anyone's finding it a little hard to keep up with the movements of Tommaso Aquilano and Roberto Rimondi this season, that's hardly surprising. First, they are the guys who have just presented their first collection for Gianfranco Ferré (to a positive reception). Second, they have just shed their former identity as 6267 and renamed themselves, probably more sensibly in the long run, Aquilano.Rimondi. For Spring, that rechristened collection was, as Rimondi put it, "light, fluid, and fun. Ferré was more architectonic," he said. "Here we wanted to relax a bit." The pair also claimed Elsa Schiaparelli as a muse, though apart from the slightly eccentric velvet fezes, there wasn't any obvious surrealism in sight. More obviously, the imagery was coming out of the twenties: satin palazzo pants, abstracted flapper fringe (done as tiered tabs on a drop-waist dress and a coat), and antiqued Lurex. Although Aquilano and Rimondi do make pieces well worth crossing a department store to look at, the runway featured too many dresses that—nice as they were—looked derivative of Lanvin. It's understandable if A and R have been stretched this season after taking on Ferré, but once the routine's established, they need to do some more solid groundwork on establishing unique signatures for their own collection.
