There’s nothing like a well-chosen reference to get a designer’s head in gear. This season, Antonio Berardi picked up on the work of the relatively obscure, Amsterdam-based artist Louis Reith, who’s probably best known for his graphic collages incorporating pages from old books. Reith’s rhythmic approach to form had a nice decluttering effect on Berardi in this collection—there was real punch to his tailored off-the-shoulder black dresses, jackets, and tops, worn over simple white tops, and his patchwork effects and placed bead and paillette embellishments communicated a certain architectural rigor. The discipline was welcome.
Berardi did go in for a few longueurs. The scallop-edged matelassé looked a little out of place here, for instance, and he arguably gilded the lily with his patchworking by embedding it into jackets with petal-like hems. On the whole, though, Berardi chose to focus his decoration on one design element per piece—the grommets stippled on a sharp velvet suit, for instance, or the bodice of black feathers embroidered on a top—which gave the clothes a nice sense of clarity. Likewise, most of Berardi’s sculpting was limited to gestures, frequently found in the back, which underscored his tailoring’s form-fit finesse. Berardi owes Louis Reith a debt of gratitude—here’s hoping his lessons about paring back stick.
