Once upon a time, celebrities were arbiters of elegance. Today, they are social media influencers, able to send a brand’s temperature spiking to success. Apparently, the new course taken by Blumarine under the creative helm of the soft-spoken Nicola Brognano has stars queuing for requests. Kim Kardashian, Rihanna, Hailey Bieber, Dua Lipa, and the members of Blackpink can’t seem to get enough of the naughty-but-innocent look of the label’s new incarnation.
Brognano is keeping his cool. At an appointment during the look book’s shoot, he was the calm eye of the surrounding storm. “When I came on board, they were all skeptical,” he said. “I’ve been grilled by critics; now they love what I’m doing. The message was strong, different, fun—it was a clean cut with the past but I’ve kept a certain Blumarine spirit. Gen Z followers immediately reacted; girls on TikTok started to replicate Blumarine furry skirts and tops from day one. We have dedicated fan pages.”
For resort, Brognano is riffing on the new repertoire he’s established for the brand: a girly, sassy, mischievous take on the early 2000s pop-star glam of Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Christina Aguilera, which he worshipped as a teenager in Southern Italy. “Inspiration for me doesn’t mean a thing. We have to live in the now,” he said. “I’m inspired by social media, by the girls dressing for real life on Instagram and TikTok. I’m not looking to the past. But I never forget what made me love Blumarine in the first place: its romantic sexiness, its malizia.”
Brognano’s Blumarine girl is guilt-free sexy and a bit of a badass. She’s playing dress-up, but then “fucking it up with something revealing and wrong,” adding a fake-fur stole over a skimpy crocheted minidress, or wearing slouchy cargos in luscious pink satin together with a slim-fitting hot pink leather blazer and a midriff-baring bandeau top. And she loves butterflies, tattooed as embroideries on pieces like this season’s bright green strapless minidress and signifying frivolity, lightness, and whimsy. “The butterfly is becoming a sort of new Blumarine logo,” said Brognano. “Versace has the Medusa; we have the butterfly.”
