Prêt-à-porter Donna
Spring/Summer
“I feel fantasy and emotion to be essential – emotions that must translate into impulses of hyper-femininity and joy. Joy of pleasure, joy of seduction. An alchemy born from the fusion of feeling and technique, using materials and fabrics with subtlety; creating visible, transparent systems of construction; exploiting the air we displace as we move; conceiving cones that generate even unexpected volumes; overcoming, through the geometry of design, the limits and weight of matter… yet within a natural atmosphere of warmth and calm. Of magical colours such as fuchsia, pink and coral. Of unusual substances recalling pergolas and reed screens. Like raffia – a feminine scratch”.
Gianfranco Ferré
1999
Lightness and transparency. Blousons in transparent yet structured gazar, where even the density of stitching creates paths and trajectories. Raincoats in rubberised gazar and amber-toned rubber. Trousers and shirts in washed, weightless taffeta. Almost biker-style blousons in unlined leather, with just enough body to remain elastic. Crocodile fragmented and recomposed, each scale applied to stretch tulle for T-shirts or rigidly assembled for cone-shaped mini-skirts resting on the hips.
Deconstruction and transcendence of form. A desire for freedom from fixed criteria, transforming geometric fabric shapes into shirts that drape at will, and sections of circles into skirts, fastened at the waist or hips with a pin. Simple rectangles of material with drawstrings, joints, and overlaps. A harmonic thread animates organza surfaces.
Unforeseen alchemies. Black lacquered metal for fully studded surfaces, for magical galuchat effects, for ribbons sewn intermittently to form holes and slits revealing dazzling flashes of skin. Traces of matte gold, like a fantastical dusting.
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Prêt-à-porter Donna
Fall/Winter
“Having moved beyond cliché and overcome technological obsession, with a spontaneous sensibility I accentuated wild images; through subtle yet radical alchemies I blurred the boundaries between real animals and invented ones, symbols and visions. Shadows mingle with impressions that appear and vanish at once, almost like flashes, almost like the flicker of a tawny mane standing out against a boreal sky. There is an elementary sense of strength, a concentrated and elegant energy – feline. As if a wild beast, suddenly tamed, were held on a leash by a belt”.
Gianfranco Ferré
1999
Between emotion and logic unfolds an alphabet of resonances, contrasts and surprises. Matter reveals all its suppleness: linings can become exteriors, and an already strong sense of ease is heightened by the mastery of cuts. Fantastic mutations arise from jersey that is sometimes crinkled yet ultralight and encrusted with breitschwanz, from hand-painted pony skin, from the magical chase of wool threads across organza. Obsessive and dreamlike, like a spell of our time, the natural turns artificial: the dégradé of chenille and cotton has the hypnotic movement of a serpent. Scales of jet and bullion quiver like a hedgehog or a porcupine in the night. Ever more refined, the duvet – featherlight and warm – chooses an unexpected fabric: chiffon. Technique alters the appearance of denim, with biker patches in thermo-welded nylon or in silk velvet with inserts of breitschwanz or flannel.
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