How can a minimalist designer, who abhors embellishment and for whom decoration is anathema, inject a jolt of energy into spare, clean, almost severe shapes and surfaces? A play on cut and construction, albeit skillfully executed, isn’t always enough to make silhouettes visually attractive—there’s a fine line between supreme simplicity and boring plainness. Gabriele Colangelo, who has never deviated from his sometimes stark minimalist aesthetic, solved the conundrum by reverting to artistically elaborated textures and fabrications. It’s the only form of decoration admitted inside his rigorous design perimeter.
For Fall, the list of elaborate fabrications used for the collection’s streamlined looks was lengthy. Suffice to say, Colangelo personally designed and overlooked the execution of each one of them. “It was definitely an artistic process,” he said. The results suggested as much. Velvets’ and cottons’ surfaces were burnt or eroded to achieve dynamic abstract patterns of liquid beauty and lightness. Their sensuous, tactile appeal graced a series of clean-cut dresses: a marigold tunic layered under an elongated wrapped column in blue-gray hues, and a sunflower yellow slim midi dress worn with a cropped asymmetrical gilet with voluminous sleeves in a contrasting cerulean color.
By Colangelo’s standards, the collection exuded more ease and confidence than usual. Warm colors were featured prominently on skillfully cut linear shapes and elongated silhouettes. Honey-colored featherlight napa leather gave slightly oversize volumes a tactile quality, while folding and draping were used with a light hand. It all made for a fine collection, in which the designer didn’t indulge his cerebral side but tapped instead into an imaginative approach.
