Prêt-à-porter Donna
Spring/Summer

“If I were to encapsulate this collection in a single image, I would say that it deliberately blends sensuality and feeling with technology. Ultra-classic voices and forms of the wardrobe live freely, with an ease of transformation and mutation that heightens femininity and the pleasure of being a woman. Everything originates as canonical, official, governed by rules – yet everything becomes different, exciting, subtly provocative… new classics surprise through their unexpected dimensions, exaggerated to the point of the improbable or reduced and shortened, while genres intermingle in a mischievous act of subversion”.

Gianfranco Ferré

1995

New classics in materials: stretch fabrics, double duchesse, raw-edge leather applied to stretch tulle, elastic silk, silk and viscose mixed in stripes or knit structures, silk, cotton, cashmere, silk cady, stretch organza, neoprene, whalebone embroidered in gold and rendered elastic, paired with silk crêpe with tulle inlays, cords in shaded organza. 

New classics in altered proportions: variations on the white shirt. At times it loses sleeves and collar; at others it is reduced to a draping around the bust. A vague echo of school uniforms sees the white shirt paired with the black skirt. 

Variations on the suit and the pullover: the suit becomes an intensely feminine wetsuit-like ensemble. The pullover takes on the importance of a dress: in silk, cotton or cashmere, clinging to the body, from which – like memories of white shirts – pure white edges and fragments emerge. 

New classics in colour: biscuit, cream, coffee-black and pearl tones. Yet to inject vitality and suggest echoes of glamour, splashes of fluorescent colour appear: pink, Polynesian blue, popsicle orange. 

A journey with Warhol into the world of Gauguin: Tahitian sweetness, flowers of lost seas, women with long hair. Dream images electronically treated and shifted into pop colours for T-shirts, sarongs and dresses. The Matisse leaf magnified and projected onto pink silk. The play of pink. Very glamorous, very smart. 

EXCERPT FROM THE COLLECTION PRESS RELEASE

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Prêt-à-porter Donna
Fall/Winter

“Concentration, concision… in the babel of voices, in the whirl of signs, a decisive, clear step is required. Simplifying forms, responding to a need that is mental before it is aesthetic. Purifying silhouettes, yet without stripping away the sweetness of dream, imagination, fantasy… for this reason I wanted to draw a clear distinction between the wardrobe of everyday life and that of pleasure. By day, swift garments, fully aware of the rules of efficiency; by night, clothes designed for loving oneself, for seduction, more revealing, with precise connotations of playfulness and allure”.  

Gianfranco Ferré

1995

Materials. Stretch wool or hyper-hammered felt, heavily brushed mohair, double and triple crêpes without lining and worked double, stretch tricot, real and faux fur mixed together, knit applied on a stretch tulle base, Norwegian-style tricots held and reinforced by thin satin ribbons, nylon mixed with faux fur, double polished silk, double iridescent moiré, tubular moiré. 

The everyday formulary. Exceedingly light white organza shirts, sculpted to the body, have the consistency of a veil. Sleeves, with fine ribbing, caress the arm. The tiny collar is supported and shaped by further ribbing. Shoes are sharp and refined, even when the sole is thick para. Belts are ultra-narrow, mere strips that barely underline the figure. 

Dressing for pleasure. If by day the silhouette stops at the knee or is defined by trousers, by night it discovers absolute freedom: a pullover-dress worn only with opaque tights; a long dress; an even longer one. Tunics in tulle and velvet in a dense brown, almost black, punctuated by sudden streaks of bare skin. The magic of metal threads, in which cascades of tiny coral beads become entangled, and of sieves sparkling with silver dust, for glove-fitting tunics embroidered on the finest of netting. Surprising dresses: slender at the front, with a slightly flared high-waisted skirt and a velvet shirt; at the back, large tulle handkerchiefs. White tulle, black tulle. 

EXCERPT FROM THE COLLECTION PRESS RELEASE

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