Designer Sofia Crociani melded her delicate touch, raw edges and tough hardware together for a collection that used vintage influences and pieces with confidence.
She described her ethical Italian house Aelis as a gathering place of old and new, and she uses archival clothing and antique jewelry or embellishments each season as talismans throughout the collection.
This season she looked to an original beaded flapper dress from the 1920s both as inspiration and object. The sparkly white and silver number appeared on the runway layered over a new diaphanous gown with Fortuny pleating to dreamy effect.
Similar bugle beads were woven throughout the collection in a flirty short shift that had tremendous swish and swing on the runway; in a short red dress paired with a bomber, and a black one-shouldered gown. The top was crafted from vintage ribbon into a sash, balanced on the low-cut back with heavy chains and an antique bracelet found in a Japanese market.
Crociani’s ethos is to give found objects new life and she does so through the use of fabrics, chains and other pieces of jewelry. Other looks incorporated this technique, most confidently in a white gown with layers of jewels suspending a top and others that demonstrate that aforementioned delicate touch, such as taking a single bolt of silk gathered with just a few braid stitches into a billowing shrug.
Crociani always adds a touch of rock ‘n’ roll, so she decorated another bomber jacket with silver molds of wheat flowers growing at her Italian villa, attached with safety pins in an homage to the ’80s. Such an eclectic enmeshment of old and new embodies her sustainable spirit, but a bit of structure could serve well.
