You’d think at a moment where the retro dialect du jour is very ’80s-centric, this could be a promising opportunity for Emanuel Ungaro. But, as laid out in last season’s review, the wider world has developed a strong case of Ungaro intolerance.
To his credit, Marco Colagrossi has decided on drastic action. With the support of Ungaro’s board, he’s initiated promising new shoe and bag licenses. More radically, he’s decided to work with new, much more cost-effective manufacturing partners to bring down the price point of the collection. He accepts that this might well alienate some of Ungaro’s few remaining heritage customers (in fact, it already has). However, his logic is that what this brand needs to come alive again isn’t a barely there intravenous drip, drip, drip, but instead, a high-voltage, heart-starting defibrillation in the form of new, young Ungaro-philes.
“Let’s pretend we’re young, pretend we start from now, and let’s see what happens,” said Colagrossi. This starting point contained only 20 pieces. They ranged from a T-shirt in house-print silk viscose via a series of machine-pleated stretch skirts and minidresses and a nice puff-shoulder denim dress through to a suede trench. Pretty much everything was around 60 percent less expensive than Ungaro’s former first line. Colagrossi observed, “So a girl can go out clubbing and if some guy spills his Negroni on it, well, it’s sad, but she won’t be crying.”
The backdrop to this lookbook really doesn’t service the clothes, huh? On the rail and the showroom model, however, they looked young and fun. They evoked a decade Ungaro once owned without overstating it. The collection will slowly broaden as Ungaro’s new partnerships take shape. Colagrossi said: “Not all of our clients might like it, but at one point you just to have the guts to say, ‘This is it, enough. Let’s have a reset.’ Ungaro needs a better reason to exist than just carrying on existing.”
