www.ivomilan.it

   IVO MILAN – Radical Fashion Blog

Archive
May, 2019 Monthly archive

A respectable new entry for this season, Phaedo Studios, a brand of Chinese origin, whose name is inspired by a Plato work, Phaedo (in ancient Greek Φαίδων, Phàidō).

Fascinated by the sound and the protagonists of the famous Platonic dialogue, the young designer Zhuzhu, baptizes his own experience characterizing it immediately with a cultured and sophisticated aura, confirmed by the extraordinary care with which he presents his collections. Graduated from SiChuan Fine Arts Institution and then trained at the London Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, Zhuzhu continued his studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium and in 2014 in Hangzhou, China, founded Phaedo Studios. A path of cultural internalization that is enriched and intensified by the relationships with representatives of the world of art, design and fashion, areas that the young designer does not separate, developing them instead as coordinates of his own artistic dimension. In 2017 he is in fact a guest of the Triennale di Milano where he encounters the artist and collector Axel Vervoordt with whom he will develop an assiduously collaborations cultivated by that wabi-sabi spirit that unites the two personalities.

In the very accurate stands of the Parisian showroom the silk, with a suggestive abundance of tones and shapes, is the protagonist and around this precious fiber a story takes shape, a story that concentrates on what is observed and that goes far beyond here and now. The astonishment, in the face of the enthralling nuances expressed by the hanging garments, starts a soft narrative that reveals the long and complex experiments in painting the fabrics.

The process is natural, hand-made in tanks containing: fruit, seaweed, earth, coffee. The color density is given by exposure to the sun which usually lasts 2 months. The more the garments are exposed to the sun the greater is the intensity of the color, therefore they are tinged, then left to dry and then tinged again and left in the sun, until the desired note is reached.

For this reason each garment is unique and can vary with use, changing shades when in contact with the skin and the air.

The fabrics are confusing, the cotton looks like silk, the silk seems leather, the burned paper gives a chromatic continuum that, like on a musical score, harmonizes the whole collection, highly crafted and strongly characterized by sartorial knowledge of ancient Chinese tradition.

Phaedo’s poetics finds breath in the silhouettes, an alternation of empty and full, of weights and lengths that expands and amplifies a femininity which is solemn and ethereal, resolute and diaphanous, in a stunning and poignant flow, between East and West, furrowing unexplored territories that, probably, are still emerging thanks to cultural influences and completely new and globalized visual syntheses.

 

As always, an opportunity to appreciate the discovery is to accompany you into his show-room in Paris…

Read More

Nicola Bortoletto exhibition Ivo Milan

This is the first solo exhibition in its home town for Nicola Bortoletto, a young artist from Padua, class 1997.  An episode of dialogue between distant and, at the same time, close expressive experiences: on one hand the artistic manipulation of materials recovered from mainly construction contexts, such as tarred rubber and bitumen, on the other the particular sensitivity of IVO MILAN in identifying poetic languages within the so-called fashion system.

We encounter two different ways of shifting the focus from their instrumental or commercial origins to more visionary and aesthetic matrices, together, in the same space of the shop situated in via Santa Lucia 73, until next 10 June. A felt selection of artwork were one can observe how mater, in the abstract form chosen by the artist, also lends itself to existentialist analyzes and metaphors.

Part of the exhibition is a film made of moments, sequences of the artist’s creative process, and a graphic work, portrayed as a photographic book, which investigates the research and the creative process in his workplace.

nicola-bortoletto-in-action

The fulcrum of Bortoletto’s experience is the elaboration of the elements as the foundation of the artistic work, as well as the naturalness of the used materials. In an age strongly characterized by the physical dematerialization of the work of art, the sculptor has in fact elaborated a language able to tell the strong relationship between the transience of time, the human being and the matter.

His sculptures appear as assemblages and actions of repositioning, works of art in which the material entity becomes a preponderant element, together with the desire to magnify the poor material of everyday use, without any figurative purpose. They appear as primitive and primordial works, which invite to be discovered by the spectator, an exclusive and personal interpreter of every stratification, furrow and scratch revealed by the material.

Remembering, once again, that until June 10th it will be possible to visit the exhibition at the IVO MILAN store in Via Santa Lucia, 73, in the centre of Padua, we leave you with a brief photo reportage of the inauguration of Friday May 10th

 

Find the Spring/Summer Collection 2019

 


 

 

 

Read More