Armani-alum Giuseppe Marretta, now menswear design director at Pringle, was in Edinburgh’s National Museum when he encountered a display of the astronaut Nicholas Patrick and the Scottish flag he took on a NASA shuttle mission to the International Space Station in 2006. This fired his creative afterburners to create a Pringle-in-space collection. It made for a good subject of exploration whose galaxies and nebulae were realized in Italian hand-knit recycled cashmere sweaters, a fluffy brushed jacquard coat, and spray-effect recycled cashmere hoodies.
Marretta recontextualized the Pringle lion rampant via the superstitious heraldry of astrology into Leo relief sweaters (there were other astrological symbols too), and mixed high tech with old craft in knits that blended lambswool and polypropylene. There were handmade in Scotland intarsia sweaters and the season’s inevitable orbit around Pringle’s perennial center of gravity, the argyle pattern.
As we walked and talked around the suspended cutout figures, totally two dimensional, that served as this collection’s mannequins, Marretta stayed focused on knits and outerwear. This was to the detriment of some properly pulse-racing pants: His beautifully cut faded pastel corduroys were easily among the most attractive in a season as crowded with excellent cords as the Earth’s orbit is with space junk.
