Krizia, the Italian label founded by Mariuccia Mandelli in 1954, was named after a philosophical remark about vanity in one of Plato’s dialogues. Critias was actually a man who squandered his riches by alluring the women he was courting with all sorts of luxurious gifts. Apparently, Mandelli loved to remark, “I hope I’ll meet many men like Critias along the way! How lucky I’d be then!” She changed the name to Krizia to make it more exotic.
Mandelli died in 2015 at the venerable age of 90. Called “Crazy Krizia” for her zest for the avant-garde, she had a fierce personality and was fearless in her oddly experimental designs. The label became one of the pillars of Italian fashion in the ’80s and ’90s, after which it receded into the background. After many twists and turns, in 2014 it was acquired by the Chinese entrepreneur Zhu Chongyun, a woman who studied electronic engineering before founding a high-end fashion company in Shenzhen, China, in the ’90s. It has since grown into a vast empire. As of today, it counts over 400 monobrands and 4,000 employees, 80 percent of which are women.
Her first runway show as creative director was Fall 2017. For Resort, Chongyun continued to revive the house’s codes within a modern perspective, adding an artsy touch. Mandelli’s penchant for lucky animals must have resonated with the designer’s Chinese cultural background; this season, sea turtles in every possible version were happily swimming throughout the collection. They were printed on round-shouldered, short city coats in thick cotton canvas, embroidered on roomy knitted sweaters, and discreetly hidden in linings. Their carapace texture was also reproduced on big round paillettes in burnt plexiglas for a 3-D effect, stitched all over a simple knee-length shift dress. It was a nod to the unusual synthetic materials Mandelli was fond of displaying in her collection. Her idiosyncratic ’80s personal style was also referenced in big-shouldered, elongated, androgynous blazers, worn with bold black-and-white striped, high-waisted pants.
Pleats, another Krizia staple, were also a leitmotif, as in a sunflower yellow trapeze dress worn with matching pants, a pleated volant sneaking elliptically around it. A voluminous organ-pleated jumpsuit in ivory technical crepe looked like a soft carapace; the same shape was proposed in a printed version, whose geometric patterns were inspired by the Russian abstract Suprematism artist Kazimir Malevich.
Shapes were architectural and at times challenging, as were fabrics, with their thick, substantial textures. The liaison with the art world was highlighted by the collaboration with the young art photographer Andrea Artemisio, whose lookbook images had a conceptual, staged, theatrical feel.
