For their Fall collection’s presentation, Piazza Sempione’s creative directors, Federico Piaggi and Stefano Citron, entrusted young Italian filmmaker Chiara Battistini with the production of a short movie. It was shot at Villa Borsani, a Rationalist gem built in northern Italy in the ’40s by Milanese architect and designer Osvaldo Borsani, and recently opened to the public. Titled Chasing Light, the film is a delicate, poetic portrait of a girl caught in a romantic moment in time.
Collaborations with female artists were brought about by the two designers as a way of giving the label a credible connection with the zeitgeist. Since their arrival, they’ve been working at updating the house’s codes while sticking to what the label stands for: a practical, versatile, and elegant daywear style, restrained but not severe, bourgeois but with a twist of gentle modernity. So far this choice has proved successful. Retailers seem more than happy.
For Fall, the collection read as a well-edited urban wardrobe affair, with daywear taking center stage, designed with neat minimalistic lines softened by subtle, gentle details. A streamlined micro houndstooth city coat with a studded collar was worn over matching flared pants; an ankle-grazing riding coat in soft black double wool-cashmere felt both easy and chic. Pantsuits were also a strong point, proposed in tailored masculine versions in pin-striped wool or light tweed; they were apparently inspired by a ’70s Helmut Newton picture of Charlotte Rampling, beautifully androgynous and impossibly chic in a single-breasted blazer and slim cigarette pants.
