While most designers’ mood boards tend to be plastered with images of arcane artworks or cultured references to literary heroes (a recent trend), Daniel Del Core’s displays photos he’s taken in the Amazon of weird vegetation specimens, rare florals, and intricate foliage from the botanical underworld.
Fungi, mycelium, and algae feature prominently as aesthetic templates in what Del Core calls ‘mutant glamour,’ his extravagant distillation of naturalia, elements of the fantasy genre, and theatrical flourishes rendered via elaborate couture techniques. “I can sit for hours in front of a flower and try to translate its shape into a silhouette, a fan-pleated ruffle, or into the altered proportion of a dress,” he said at an appointment at his Milan atelier, where young artisans and tailors were busy bringing his creations to life.
Del Core approached his first pre-fall outing as an exercise in reduction and concision, toning down a notch his flamboyance without digressing from the imaginative flair defining his repertoire. The collection was called Abstract Zero, as if it were a sort of compendium or summary of the label’s essentials, filtered from the runway and translated for the everyday. For example, a rounded ruched sleeve which in the show had operatic proportions, here looked gentler on a sleek tailored coat or on a knitted minidress. The fan-pleated details inspired by the fleshy petals of wild orchids found on a couture dress were given attenuated allure on a silver evening dress and a flame red lace intarsia’d chiffon number. The red look was worn with an appropriately mutant face mask, which could’ve been created by experimental designer Neri Oxman’s Mediated Matter Research Group at MIT Media Lab; it also recalled the late Alexander McQueen’s gestures of disquieting glamour, and would look apropos on Björk.
Mushrooms, which are having a moment as a natural source from which to grow a sustainable alternative to animal leather, are one of the designer’s botanical obsessions, as they’re symbols of metamorphosis and facilitators of transformation. Here they featured as the collection’s main decorative motif, translated into a jacquard pattern on a sartorial bomber and reproduced on flimsy lace for a billowy dress, or else needle-punched on knitted lurex jumpers. Elsewhere, a vivid abstract pattern, printed on a vertical-cut quilted coat or on a silk blouse with loose trailing panels gave a jolt to the mainly autumnal palette.
With two promising collections under his belt, Del Core is sharpening his high-end vision and skills, which he honed working in Beirut alongside Zuhair Murad and with Gucci’s Alessandro Michele as VIP designer. Presenting a concise, tightly edited pre-fall collection (or Abstract, as he wants it to be called) seems to be a wise move, not only from a business standpoint but also creatively, as it gives him room to work on the catwalk collections without having to compromise on their visual impact and their virtuoso execution.
