Hyun Wook Li’s design pedigree is impressive: Before joining Canali at the end of last year he spent six years at Berluti. Before that he was at Zegna. Before that he was at Gianfranco Ferre. And prior to Ferre there was a cameo at Max Mara. His very first gig out of fashion school was a stint at Versace men’s, in 2000.
For his first headlining presentation chez Canali, Wook applied the sum of his experience by dividing the collection into parts. There were four rooms, entitled Equilibrium, Dynamism, Steadiness, and Inspiration, all of which were furnished with carefully made suits and semiformal pieces in colors overwhelmingly designed (that fiery orange look apart) neither to pop nor to fade into the background: a faded pink short-sleeved guernsey above some powdery green tailored pants was one sounds-wrong-worked-well outfit combination. Wool silk linen blends were used to fashion light but strongly formed jackets with minimal shoulder construction and minimal bomber jackets that looked excellent with their matching pants, that bomber-suit idea again. There were plenty of shirt/jacket hybrids, the horribly named “shacket” that is an interesting third way for men’s mid-weight outerwear, that looked very good. These were sometimes constructed in the house “Impeccable” fabric whose creaseless USP Elisabetta Canali enthusiastically demonstrated by scrunching and twisting.
Wook has has also been working on Canali’s brand language. Shirts and ties and sneaker soles came in a matching abstracted print of the house’s name. Belt buckles and back fastenings were fashioned as functional, claw-shaped Cs. Knitted ties and the leather heel piece on some really want-able sneakers in tweed featured yet more of them. But while there were plenty of Cs to see, they never imposed themselves over the clothes they adorned: This was less logomania than logo-whispering.
“For me classic is timeless and contemporary is ageless,” said Wook of his design philosophy at Canali. This was a confident and hopeful debut for a house that has been in need of direction.
