Parties are back post-pandemic; weddings, balls, birthdays, and all sorts of celebratory events are being enjoyed with guilt-free abandon. Designers are obviously obliging, offering up-to-the-task collections which unleash their festive creativity. After seasons of presenting everyday wardrobes, pragmatic and unfussy, they’re probably elated at the prospect of expressing their wilder, less restrained sides.
This was certainly the feeling chez Lorenzo Serafini. Loosely inspired by the hourglassy silhouette of the ’50s, his Philosophy collection was full of pretty bustier confections worn with tulle crinolines under ankle-grazing circle skirts, printed in ombré florals or dégradé tie-dyes. These evoked romantic images of a blooming spring garden, and were played against darker, sleeker, and sexier options elsewhere in the collection.
On that note, a tight-fitting draped minidress in stretch jersey printed in reworked archival florals was worn with up-to-the-elbow matching gloves and tucked like a T-shirt into boyish, low-rise white canvas cargos, while a black body-con number looked cool under a shapely tailored tux and a ruffled, off-the-shoulder black top in stretchy lycra contrasted with tight-fitted, slim dark denims.
Serafini thinks that you have to make your fashion message straightforward, individual, and precise today. “There’s so much stuff around,” he said. “You have to be clear and focused in what you want to say as a designer. And trying to bring some lightness into the picture. Your identity as a brand can be ‘broken,’ so to speak, by the identity of the interpreters. Everyone can wear whatever they please regardless of gender. But rules can only be broken if you establish them.”
