Various | IVO MILAN - Radical Fashion Blog

RISA NAKAMURA F/W 2024-’25

By: Soili Milan

15-11-2024

We are in Bergamo, but the journey begins far away, in Tokyo, the city of birth and education. Risa specializes at the prestigious Tama Art University in textile design, a path that leads her to the Miyake Design Studio, where she collaborates on the most artisanal of the lines, Haat.

The move to Italy follows, as often happens for Japanese talents, where she works until she is able to open her own tailor shop, creating only custom made garments, in the historic center of Bergamo. Finally, the big leap: a small production destined to a few select boutiques around the world, and a brand that carries her name: Risa Nakamura.

The designer brings into her workshop the great textile expertise of Japan and works with meticulous craftsmanship, ranging from chromatic research with plant-based dyes to the manual creation of buttons made from Calabrian briar wood, salvaging the remnants of this sturdy wood, typically used for smoking pipes. Her sensitivity extends even to the most overlooked materials, like buttons, sometimes barely visible because hidden by discreet flaps.

Japan influences the entire atmosphere of Risa’s work. Its presence is felt in every gesture: the selection of pure fibers, like Shetland wool, protected by its well-known roughness with natural linen linings; organic cotton suede, an alternative to the more casual sweatshirts; the crisp lightness of washed silk crepe de chine in her color palette. Japan twirls between strict or soft forms, inspired by workwear or the elements of the kimono, as well as in certain exercises typical of origami, where the development of geometry begins with small repeated connections, as seen in her patchwork skirt made of one hundred pieces, coming together to form a perfect circle.

Risa’s world, shared with her most loyal collaborator, her husband Emiliano, is dominated with a slow, patient, and sensitive aesthetic, dedicated to generating a surprising Zen-like balance: simplicity, care, and a laboriously engaging, existential gentleness.

To discover the new collection: ivomilan.com

Junya Watanabe F/W 2024-’25

By: Soili Milan

19-10-2024

Various

Opportunities to showcase the work of Junya Watanabe, the Japanese designer historically produced by the Maison Comme des Garçons, have been plentiful. He was among the illustrious guests at the Radical Fashion exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London back in 2001, which also inspired the homonymous publication.

Elements such as origami, metal detailing, and eco-leather are repeatedly used to create a strongly recognizable language that sits at the intersection of avant-garde cyber-metropolitan trends and the visual arts.

According to the philosophy established by the Japanese school—from Rei Kawakubo to Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, and others—the dress transcends its simple decorative function, of medium and filter for social representation, instead becomes a creative opportunity and a textile device of complex realization.

For the current Fall/Winter season, Watanabe’s patchworks of matter evoke the ostentatious yet irresponsible luxury of snake skin, but in his hands, everything is a construct. The shapes, innovative and sculptural, articulate poetics that stand in stark contrast to any vulgarity. Silhouettes expand, as seen in the ‘spatial’ coat, whose expertly balanced volume takes the form of a spiral cape made from faux leather sewn onto heavy wool melton. Alternatively, they soften in a more subdued version with dropped sleeves. The dry eco-leather dress, essentially a long vest that can be layered over simpler outfits, does not shy away from more explicit elements of femininity. Unmissable the denim, with the collaboration with Levi’s, deconstructed and recomposed following the theme of the season.

This bold rhythm is a symphony of high notes and more subdued tones, a laborious composition between everyday contexts far removed from boredom and more vibrant and expressive social events.

Melitta Baumeister S/S 2024

By: Soili Milan

27-04-2024

Architettura, Clothing, Design, Fashion, Various

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.

: Photo by Document Journal

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.

DAWEI news

By: Soili Milan

17-11-2023

Clothing, Various

Introducing another new addition to the FW 2023-24 season: DAWEI. The eponymous brand of the young Paris-based designer, Dawei Sun, was launched in 2016 after his graduation from the École de la Chambre Syndicale de La Couture. He gained experience as a collaborator with Balenciaga and John Galliano, and later served as the artistic director of Maison Cacharel.

He was a finalist in the prestigious Andam Fashion Award, the foremost French fashion competition founded in 1989 and initially won by Martin Margiela. He officially joined the Paris Fashion Week schedule in 2019, showcasing his designs on the runway.

Strongly influenced by French couture and the bold expressions of the Japanese school, Dawei provides a personal reinterpretation, bridging the unattainable refinement of the former with the more creatively rugged aspects of the latter. The result is a sophisticated synthesis of textile experiments, where fibers blend to simulate traditional fabrics. For instance, the chevron pattern is adapted to significantly more comfortable solutions, allowing for feminine silhouettes, sometimes embracing, as seen in bustiers. Similarly, wool jersey, guided by skillfully executed stitches, attains an elegance not commonly associated with it.

Wide or fitted lines, shorter of longer lengths, all skillfully measured and in constant balance.

His decorative choices act as dynamic structures that breathe life into character and originality without imposing themselves through excessive force.

The entire collection exudes a promising freshness, making it both wearable and feminine. Even in its more explicit expressions, there’s a refined and evolved quality that evokes a forgotten memory.

Mix and Match Spring/Summer 2022

By: Soili Milan

15-07-2022

Abbigliamento, Clothing, Design, Fashion, Various

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!