Davide Marello, Boglioli’s young, lanky, and well-mannered creative director, has a penchant for art, which nowadays seems to serve as a prerequisite for every fashion designer worthy of the title. Art images are plastered across every mood board, the more arcane the better. Sometimes they’re just a thin veneer of maquillage layered over quite weak collections to upgrade them and make them seem nobler and less mundane: A marketing trick. But that didn’t seem to apply to Marello, whose inspiration seemed quite authentic; well-bred guys are not supposed to cheat, after all.
For Spring Marello referenced Nicolas de Staël, a Russian painter and émigré of illustrious lineage. “He lived in Paris in the same artistic milieu as Kandinskij, but was less successful. I’ve always loved his paintings,” said Marello who, as an art graduate, was showing his credentials. “His style was rarefied, powerfully restrained, abstract, and sentimental at the same time.” Being quite the romantic wanderer, the designer also waxed lyrical about the shadows cast in summer by the ornate wrought iron gates concealing from view the manicured courtyards of Milanese palazzos. They were reminiscent of abstract paintings, Marello explained. The patterns were translated onto atmospheric prints for classic silk shirts and for the malleable, unlined artisanal blazers for which Boglioli is known. Marello kept the silhouette slim and simple; shapes were soft and relaxed, in keeping with the label’s tradition and excellent craftsmanship. The style was understated, elegant, as soft-spoken as the designer himself, with a bit of modern nonchalance thrown in for good measure. It made for a balanced, compelling collection; yet, a gesture à la De Staël—instinctive yet stylish, a bit raw, emotionally blasé—would’ve have further enhanced Boglioli’s modern sense of elegance.
