Winner of the 2023 edition of the prestigious CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund – award dedicated to the new design generations, established to sustain the most promising talents of the international scene in order that, quoting Anne Wintour, can be seen and heard – German origins and one master at the Parson University of New York, by now her chosen city, Melitta Baumeister is the designer of the homonymous brand founded in 2013 in the Big Apple, claimed for the already defined and identifiable language, constantly swinging between two worlds in dialogue: fashion and sculpture.

Where the inspiration takes form from items and fabrics of ordinary use, without formal and decorative excess, Melitta misleads the collocation, floors, by introducing materials that serve as real plastic structures that modify the space around the body of whom is wearing them. Dresses, shirts and tops, change their nature of necessary elements to a metropolitan everyday routine, lived following comfort needs typically juvenile and dynamic, of rides by bicycle and morning runs, in real communicative occasions: the sponge inserts itself in the rigid cotton or polyester giving three-dimensional original geometries and moving the usual axis of the architectural prospective.

Waves, irregualar bubbles and circles become spatial elements that decorate the silhouette connecting it to the ether, in a movement that accompanies the regal stride changing the perception, insinuating cheerfulness, surprise and influencing the posture itself, thanks to forms with disorienting visual impact, authentically new.

Melitte sustains short production chains, everything is produced in New York, and the textile lab are seen and followed incessantly in a productive cycle open to facing challenges, solving criticalities. Some items are treated as continuous, becoming real icons of the brand, following an ethic against the obsolescence typical of the sector.

The designer also reveals frequent contamination with artistic avantgardes and aesthetic symbols of her generation, traceable in the bold sketched snakes prints, in monochromatic contrast grafic signs or in trompe l’oeil hand dyed, decisively pop.

A creative and handcrafted adventure, the one of Melitta Baumeister, already widely embraced by art galleries and independent boutique, destined to developments to observe with curious and open attention.

Far from being a newcomer to the world of design, Ziggy Chen, the pseudonym of Chen Xiang, launched his men’s fashion label in Shanghai in 2012. This followed years of experience in teaching textile design and leading Decoster Concept, an avant-garde brand targeted at the local Chinese market.

His success and international recognition enabled him to introduce a women’s fashion line in 2019.

With a distinct Eastern skill set, Ziggy seamlessly merges elements from the vast traditional heritage of his homeland with the influences and rhythms of the Western world. This syncretism encompasses the importation of the finest European and Japanese textiles, their reassembly using ancient local manufacturing techniques, and stylistic interpretations continually influenced by the world of visual arts, the many countries he has visited, and a particular emphasis on the simple and industrious daily life.

Ziggy Chen fuses these diverse influences and knowledge while guided by a concept of comfort and a pronounced preference for natural fibers, including silk, cotton, wool, and cashmere. His artistic vision incorporates asymmetries and decorative details, skillfully harmonized through his tailoring expertise and the chromatic sensitivity derived from the selected fibers for each creation.

Credits:

Stylist: Sari Milan
Photography: Cezara Schiopu
Text: Soili Milan

Collaborations: Centro Ottico – Gruppo GREEN VISION

Eco-fashion-designer of Italian-Austrian origin, Agostina Zwilling is an artist who investigates processes, scenarios, methodologies and best practices in design.

Using the nunofelt technique, she creates works ranging from interior design (fibre walls, paintings, carpets, tapestries etc.) to clothing.

Shapes and colours are moulded by hand, through a slow process that goes from massaging silk, wool, cashmere, linen, hemp, beech, etc., to choosing the plants, flowers and roots that make up the chromatic bases.

Each garment is a unique work, an actual size development is impossible, because the finishes become unrepeatable and the manipulation generates new nuances and details each time. Even the idea of a definitively finished work is inconceivable. The fibres move, change with time, depending on the wearer’s use and silhouette.

Nunofelt is dynamic by nature and, in Zwilling’s work, lends itself to a correspondence with the concept of the ‘open work’, understood as an artwork.

whose aesthetic, formal or material identity is not defined once and for all, but is subject to factors of variability that make it, to a greater or lesser extent, always different. (Cit. Umberto Eco)

But it is also open in its possibility of being interpreted in ways that vary according to the sensitivity and emotions of those who encounter it.

Zwilling’s is not a clothing line, but represents a true philosophy of life that aggregates and connects training, creativity, sustainable supply chains, ethical and aesthetic awareness, according to an idea that weaving is a gesture that intersects human and social networks with the final product, without interruptions, as a responsible and circular action, in harmonious and conscious tension within a flow that smacks of art, anthropology, ecology, and in general of culture and beauty.

On the ivomilan.com you can discover the Zwilling private collection for autumn/winter 2023-24.

Agostina Zwilling is the founder of the Italian Felt Academy. The school is located in Verona town, Italy. For more information and contacts, you can visit the Italianfeltacademy.it

Below, a photographic tour in the experimental processes that characterize the work of the designer (the material is provided by Zwilling herself and all rights are reserved)

Agostina Zwilling eco felt designer by vocation.

Her world does not contemplate needles and scissors. Agostina does not sew: she unites. Agostina does not produce: she creates.

Her world does not contemplate needles and scissors. It winds and unwinds around a thread that is not just raw material, but also a relationship.It is the thread that ties different sensibilities, perceptions and intuitions together, making them into one story bursting with many differences. It is the experience of a common “feeling”. Agostina does not sew: she unites. Agostina does not produce: she creates. She loves to put together what has been damaged. Soothing, warming, wrapping. Even a tear is useful to her purpose: it is breaking the rule, the subversion of order in favour not of dis-order, but of Harmony. Her prime preoccupation (which we can identify with) is to propose a new “perception” of the world.

Agostina Zwilling, a felt-fashion-artist committed to spreading the ancient art of felt making in modern couture, is the founder of the Italian Felt Academy. The school was situated in Verona, Italy. For more information, visit  www.italianfeltacademy.it

The first change of temperatures allows us to finally experience the autumn season even outside of the online dimension ‘catalogue‘ and of the daily spaces of the store.

Now you can place the garments within the colors and atmospheres of the period, imagining them in their potential and transversal recombinations. Our tutor Sari, on a Sunday in November, leads us into passionate mix and match where you can discover, from new perspectives, different items of the seasonal assortment.

The fantastic Italian cashmere F-Cashmere – i.e. Fissore, historic brand of the most noble yarn – with different color blocks and surprisingly soft hand, accompanies a wide, rustic skirt in English Donegal by Ricorrrobe, Anglo-Japanese new-entry. They close the ensemble: a knitted hat made of acrylic, nylon and mohair by Chisaki – directly from Japan – and one of the nap Lak leather bags of the cheerful South Tyrolean Maison, Zilla.

And one more, the interpretation of Noir – Kei Ninomiya collection, the most classic winter, eternal heavy knit with braids and Lapp workmanship in a piece of more feminine portability, thanks to a wide development of the sleeves, of a complex high neck/hood and ideal proportions for voluminous skirts, such as that in waxed cotton tartan always proposed by Ricorrrobe. A cool polar hat, all moldable and the revisitation of the typical historical aviator jacket, squeezed and resumed with daring tailoring seams, by Junya Watanabe, celebrate a coming winter of international evocative recognizability.

To close our appointment, a mix and match that mixes together a unique piece of the Nuno-felt designer by Emanuela Rovida, in organic merino wool and silk, handmade and fused with painterly skills from natural colors of shrubs and territorial plants, completely reversible and wearable front and back, seamless, combined with a skirt by Marc Le Bihan, from the refined fabric of gauze and boiled wool, worked together with three-dimensional bubbles. To cover the exceptional quality of the garments, a Forme d’Expression coat with a daily taste, comfortable, in a mélange jersey with a vibrant and intense blue, reverberated by the dazzling glitter of a metallic leather briefcase.

How many times in the shop has an occasional and distracted adventurer started with this exclamation: “Oh, yes, Issey Miyake, the perfumes one!“.

An expression that, in all its naive purity, revealed the striking distance between our work as promoters and popularizers of the so-called Japanese school and the public actually reached in the city. Maybe it also happened simultaneously with one of the many windows focused on a futuristic garment by Issey Miyake. Each time, that sound confirms the long way still to go and the burning frustration of being misunderstood. Without triggering a competition between the world of perfumes and that of clothes, even those who are not in the trade know how much his story belonged to the latter, with perfume being a typical gadget of the most established designers.

Yet not in Padova.

Bringing Issey Miyake to the city 24 years ago, when the brand still did not have a generalized fame and his perfume did not yet exist, did not create status, but only circulated within evolved global niches. This meant an important acceleration towards complexity and an indisputable recognition to the shop. First of all, in order to present it, the space had to have the aesthetic ‘requisites’ compatible with the strict philosophy of the Maison, whose concern for the future, rather than sales and the diffusion of the brand, was aimed at the defense of its cultural prestige. The staff of the Parisian showroom came personally to make sure everything was set and then gave us the green light that the collaboration between Ivo Milan and the company could begin in 1998.

And it was immediatly a great love what would become a long adventure; a challenge on the edge of the most heated creative tension, interrupted only by the closure of the store in 2020 (at the time we could not imagine being able to reopen) and by the inevitable advance of other local competitors…

It is useless to dwell on the unmpteenth narrative around the work of Issey Miyake because there are more expert pens than us that have written and are writing about it. In our own small way, we have had more opportunities to present the brand in its different lines (Pleats Please, BaoBao, Issey Miyake-Fête, A-Poc, 132. 5, Cauliflower) and the satellite ones of the group (Haat, A-net with Final Home, Plantation and Zucca). Since we have worked with all of them for a long time, we wanted to put a particular focus on the one that bears his name, offering it in its most daring, free and joyful expressions. We believe that bringing witness to this propulsive collaboration is the least we can do to the many people who, spontaneously, in these days, have contacted us to thank us for allowing them the opportunity to be so close to the best of Issey Miyake.

An overview of photos, articles, videos (many on our youtube channel) about this long journey together, with all the gratitude to the poetry that it has brought to our work… Thank you!

While the summer insists on its hottest manifestations, longing for holiday destinations, regenerating rhythms and locations, we return together to Sari with some outdoor shots.

An opportunity to observe, from other perspectives, lights and combinations the proposals of a catalog that is now close to welcoming the first autumn deliveries…Let’s go!

Many thanks to GART for the location and to Andrea Rossi for the photos

Accessoires by: Shoto (shoes and bags), Zilla (bags), Chisaki (hats).

Clothing by: Marc Le Bihan, Album di Famiglia, Daniela Gregis, Junya Watanabe, Forme d’Expression, Shu Moriyama, Maria Calderara

Early October 2021, it’s still hot during an atypical Paris Fashion Week, with few foreign presences, fashion shows, and showrooms (effects of the pandemic and all relevant restrictions).

After almost two years of absence from the Ville Lumière, with great expectations, we plunge into the neighbourhood hosting Marc Le Bihan‘s space, in the 13th Arrondissement, near Place d’Italie. We don’t really know this area well and it seems not to be so familiar to the fashion circuits. So it’s a surprise, for us, to walk on quiet little streets up to the small hill called Butte-aux-Cailles. Step by step, we get close to rhythms that are completely different from those left only few subway stops before, in the far more animated Marais. We feel the reassuring silence of popular areas on days off and the diffuse white of the houses, like a sunny village on remote Greek islands, interrupted by recurring colourful murals. Bewildered by the sudden change of perspective, almost holiday-like, we arrive, with perfect punctuality, at our appointment.

A blue-stained door opens to welcome us into the French designer’s workshop, located right next door to his home. This is where he has been moving with his showroom for the past few seasons. Far more spacious than in the store in the Pigalle area, it spreads out behind a magnificent green indoor patio, carefully set up to welcome friends and clients with the sincere warmth that distinguishes his mild and generous attitude. An ability to put everyone at ease that involves every single cell, leading it to a zone of comfort and well-being. The meeting is almost touching, after so long and with all the changes faced. We are brought back into the working mood, only after relaxed and affectionate greetings, seasoned with ironic lightness, thus studying and mentally composing the choice of a vast collection, spread in several rooms with soft lights.

A path inside a poetics further evolved from last seasons, where Haute Couture harmonizes with the archive (always present) and novelties with a more contemporary taste.

We have already extensively presented it in the past (for an in-depth look, see here) and Marc Le Bihan manages to develop the same idea of femininity with extreme consistency and creativity, without giving in to the drift of ‘everything returns’ with dreaded and boring redundancies. Although he has now been in this sector for several years, in his 2022 spring/summer collection a tension toward experimentation both, formal and textile, is evident. From the ‘writings’ with moving and contrasting under-stitching that emerge from complex dyeing of silk, daring experiments that halve the size of the starting fabric, to textile patchworks that with the constant use of the idea of an unfinished work – an open work – generate garments with ambivalent categories. Even when you wear it, partially jacket and partially shirt, able of placing themselves, depending on their combination, in very elegant settings or in more informal everyday contexts.

And the presence of tulle, so recurrent in his path, is elaborated within a range of colours that, in impalpable overlays, sketch nuances of touching poetry. A certain latent romanticism, is always included thanks to compositions with more composed and severe lines, with raw-cut profiles and complex tailoring constructions or rough ruffles in silk and elastane.

The assortment is complex, not easy to subtract elements from a symphony in which everything is interconnected, but, in the end, re-emerging from an almost hypnotic enchantment, you find yourself in a personal selection that Marc observes, with curiosity and satisfaction, struck himself by the inexhaustible interpretative possibilities of his proposals.

Meanwhile evening has fallen, with the mottled sound offered by a scratching needle the record spinning, we return to the pleasure of interminable tales and long-awaited laughter…

“It’s all hand finished!”

That’s what said one of the more expert tailors of the city while caressing with great care the endless length of the rim to be adjusted, bottom part of a cashmere coat so soft to the touch that fully captured her skilled sensitivity.

Even if Marta is pretty used to our ‘never-seen items’, with some pride I’ll say her: ‘Yes, it’s a Daniela Gregis’ coat, she works like that!’

Actually it’s not usual for the items of the designer from Bergamo to arrive to the tailor’s shop. Fit and proportions are so comfortable that they never need adjustments, and instead of removing even a single inch from her precious fabrics, it’s more usual to use the eyelets applied to the sides to fix a rim, and adjust the length with new creativity.

But that ice melange coat could not risk to be stepped on up and down the bridges in Venice, during the morning runs, or just put on the shoulder during the daily working routine of its lucky owner.

Daniela Gregis’ items have an amazing peculiarity: you can wear them, even considering their precious compositions, in everyday life.

When you’re in a hurry or when you’re fully distracted, they will never embarrass you! They’re interchangeable, they can be worn inside out, back to front or, for coats in general, even upside down. This is due to their construction which is designed from the very beginning, with patterns and fabrics, doubled or alternate, changing according to how they are worn. Thanks to all accurate and full finishing, Gregis’ clothes still keep a constant balance in all solutions, even the most unexpected.

In an apparently joyful attitude, her last collection, called Tintinba – evocative onomatopoeic sound of fragile instruments which, when in contact, can change into elementary and casual melodies – the Gregis’ creations offer infinite hypotheses and chromatic proposals, in fabrics and shapes, not sketched at all.

Harmonies can be composed with a unique complicity between colour themes and its best material creation: velvet, cashmere, silk, cotton, gauze, and so on. Each fibre assumes a pictorial and expressive responsibility becoming the interpreter of dominant seasonal feelings: the indefinite blue of winter skies, hot tones of strong chestnuts, cold notes of future and desired seasonal frosts.

That awareness can be found in textures and woven outlines in different colours, in the hugs of indifferent movements of stiff velvet and calm cashmere gauze, in the wrinkles of washed fabrics, from houndstooth to tone-on-tone patterns, to flawless and wide melange coils, from definitive silk, grabbed to rounded stitching, until stretched wool.

A show that starts little by little, because the creation is slow and fatiguing, and the season – we all know it – is the longest one…

We have already had the opportunity to meet Shu Moriyama before, and those who visited our store in Padua in the last years could know his work, his textile and styling know-how originating from his experience at the unique ateliers of Yohji Yamamoto, whom he cooperated with before launching his own collection, under his own name.

As a generous participant in this transitioning moment in our working experience, Shu shows us his S/S 2021 suggestions.

With a typical Japanese approach, the horizon from which he gets his own inspiration is far away from the influences of western fashion, more focused on commercial inputs and linked to seasonal trends bringing to fast obsolescence. Shu’s view melts with trees, flowers and fruits, in an effort of abstraction which gives origin to the pleats of his comfortable crinkled fabrics, with small dots recalling petals, some times tone on tone, some others more showy.

The wide spaces of Normandy, his land of adoption, are the background where his delicate clothes take form, designed with hidden elegance, more to put people at ease than to surprise in an impressive way. Poetry is not showed off, but it’s outlined with soft tones in fabric shades, in the embrace of shawl collars, in drop sleeves usually narrower at the bottom, in the chance of wearing many coats upside down, changing the final look.

Dresses, jackets, coats, skirts, and trousers, are all designed with comfort and pragmatism in mind, thanks to the elasticity of a polyester that keeps the crinkled effect in time and warrants excellent fit performance, and, more simply, to very easy maintenance, since they can be washed in washing machine with no ironing.

An alternative – less explicit and identifiable – to the more popular plated fabric of Issey Miyake, with a more reserved and calm accent, the one of Shu Moriyama, a visionary artisan to the utmost extremes for France and fashion.

Find the collection on our website!

Many thanks to Shu Moriyama for pictures and drawings and to Sari for the photograph shooting.

Already a regular guest at London’s Dover Street Market, despite her young age, Renli Su unveils an unprecedented China compared to what usually comes in mind: a common place of low-cost productions or certain throwaway Chinese clothing.

Daughter of a globalization that shortens space-time distances, the designer of Fujian, is formed at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing and continues her studies at London College of Fashion in London. Passionate about history and linked to the placid and maritime landscapes of her country of origin, in an unique and very personal cultural syncretism, Renli Su weaves her collections keeping stretch the strings between local solicitations and the discoveries related with the history of costume, discoveries carried out during the studies in Great Britain.

It’s the Victorian England that fascinates the designer in particular, as the shapes and fabrics can reveal the social life of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The fabrics revived in the fairs and vintage markets of the European metropolis, allow her to cultivate, with the typical academic look of those who are ardent for textiles – less accessible in China after the Cultural Revolution – a cure for visual details, appropriating them in the realization of her garments.

Each collection follows and elaborates a historical theme, for the Fall/Winter 2018-2019 the inspiration is drawn from the extraordinary story of the French botanist Jeanne Baret, born in 1740 and considered the first woman to circumnavigate the world. Jeanne’s insatiable curiosity and desire for adventure led her on an almost impossible journey: disguised as a man she embarked on the ship of the Prince Louis Antoine de Bouganville, remaining many years at sea and visiting the most remote places. During her travels she discovered, collected and cataloged hundreds of species of plants, among which the most famous is the bougainvillea, named in honor of the chief explorer of the expedition.

One wonders what is the connection between the French researcher and the work of the Chinese designer and it is Renli Su herself who explains it to us:

“While Jeanne Baret represented two different ways of observing the natural world, combining the feminist folk knowledge of herbalism with the botanical science until then dominated by men, I seek a balance between feminine and masculine silhouettes, fusing elements of the Victorian era and floral motifs with the sailor’s uniform for a more contemporary and active vision of the woman”

And here is the translation, in a tenderhearted textile story:

Naval traditions are evoked by the creamy white furrowed with blue and beige stripes, sometimes with “lacquered” effect treatments that emphasize the shimmering of the sun and the salt; intense blue and faded grays suggest the depths of the oceans. Embroidered flowering branches, as if they had naturally fallen on the quilted and slightly embossed cotton, replicate the meticulous drawings of the adventurous botany. And again, cotton and linen jacquards rise like sailor sleeves. The silk and wool textures are offered thinking to protect those exposed to the weather of the trip. The Victorian details are seen in the ‘diboning of the corset’, with crossed strings and textile patchwork that together bring elements of Chinese culture, from cotton paper, to familiar work uniforms that can be traced in diagonal cuts and closures. The quilted cotton and the use of synthetic fur with very warm yak fibers, for jackets and reversible coats, insist on respecting the seasonal thermal requirements.

Renli Su makes no secret of her inspirations and aspirations which, as herself writes, emerge from an instinct, deeply human, of adventure and the courage to follow it, regardless of one’s origin and culture, in spaces, geographical or mental, still unknown and often antithetical.

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

Find online the New Collection