“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…

Click here to watch the entire IVO MILAN staff at work in the shop trying on the Verybusy A/W 2014-15 proposals.

Despite the meaning of its name, Verybusy is an Italian knitwear brand near to definitely slower rhythms. Among the winter proposals, with the exception of some pieces in bamboo as anallergic base ideal for the skin, it comes out with a very soft hand cashmere yarn. The shapes, in their terse essentiality, varies from tighter and more linear ones to others wider and more comfortable and are thought in function of the company chromatic project.

In fact the Verybusy innovative potential consists in the systematical experimentation of the colours, together with the radical determination in using only natural fibers. Every sweater is conceived as a singly palette. The dyes are absorbed and then given back by the yarn surface in a suggestive combination of adopted shade and chosen material. Nuances and pictorial exercises compose pieces different from one another, because they never comes out with the same colour distribution. With the outside often very different from the inside, the use possibilities are doubled and are adapted to the need or the preference of lighter or darker shades.

Without formal excesses, Verybusy enters with discretion into more complex lines and, with great pictorial sensibility and extraordinary textile skill, realizes a knitwear line unique in its mastery of changing the colour tones, keeping in the same time the extreme softness of the best cashmere completely unchanged.

Verybusy 1 thread on point 8 cashmere cardigan with abstract painted effect printing with side windows, reversible.

Vivienne Westwood Red Label ankle length trousers in pinstripe wool, close-fitting, belt with belt loops, zip and ‘Vivienne’ button closure, two diagonal side front pockets, two small welt pockets with triangular flap and small buttons on the back.

Verybusy 1 thread on point 8 cashmere cardigan with abstract painted effect printing with side windows, reversible.

Vivienne Westwood Red Label ankle length trousers in pinstripe wool, close-fitting, belt with belt loops, zip and ‘Vivienne’ button closure, two diagonal side front pockets, two small welt pockets with triangular flap and small buttons on the back.

Verybusy 1 thread on point 8 cashmere sweater with abstract painted effect, high cowl neck, trapeze line, reversible.

Vivienne Westwood Red Label ankle length trousers in pinstripe wool, close-fitting, belt with belt loops, zip and ‘Vivienne’ button closure, two diagonal side front pockets, two small welt pockets with triangular flap and small buttons on the back.

Verybusy 1 thread on point 8 cashmere sweater with abstract painted effect, high cowl neck, trapeze line, reversible.

Verybusy 1 thread on point 8 cashmere sweater with abstract painted effect, high cowl neck, trapeze line, reversible.

Vivienne Westwood Red Label ankle length trousers in pinstripe wool, close-fitting, belt with belt loops, zip and ‘Vivienne’ button closure, two diagonal side front pockets, two small welt pockets with triangular flap and small buttons on the back.

Verybusy wide sweater in stocking stitch cashmere with abstract printing with a painted effect, turtle soft neck, reversible.

Trippen high ankle boots in oiled suede cowhide leather, with laces and small hooks, removable inner cork sole, rubber sole.

Verybusy wide cardigan in stocking stitch cashmere with big rectangle pattern in different colours with a painted effect, wide V neck, reversible.

Trippen high ankle boots in oiled suede cowhide leather, with laces and small hooks, removable inner cork sole, rubber sole.

Verybusy wide cardigan in stocking stitch cashmere with big rectangle pattern in different colours with a painted effect, wide V neck, reversible.

Trippen high ankle boots in oiled suede cowhide leather, with laces and small hooks, removable inner cork sole, rubber sole.

Verybusy wide cardigan in stocking stitch cashmere with big rectangle pattern in different colours with a painted effect, wide V neck, reversible.

Trippen high ankle boots in oiled suede cowhide leather, with laces and small hooks, removable inner cork sole, rubber sole.

Verybusy wide cardigan in stocking stitch cashmere with tone on tone colour shades, wide V neck, reversible.

Trippen high ankle boots in oiled suede cowhide leather, with laces and small hooks, removable inner cork sole, rubber sole.

Verybusy wide cardigan in stocking stitch cashmere with tone on tone colour shades, wide V neck, reversible.

Trippen high ankle boots in oiled suede cowhide leather, with laces and small hooks, removable inner cork sole, rubber sole.

Detail sweater Oyuna

The strength of globalization is at work here!

From clothing to home accessories, the British designer brand Oyuna, has had the genial idea of combining the finest cashmere from its native country of Mongolia, with its most established manufacturing tradition from Scotland.

If Mongolia is among the top producers in the world and without equal for quality, the chemical properties of the water in British streams have enhanced the luxurious softness of this noblest of yarns for centuries.

The rareness of the material limits distribution of the product to a small circle of select boutiques around the world and makes it difficult to find and, paradoxically, to learn of its reputation. A strange by-product of marketing products of superior quality nowadays is that they are often not granted the attention that they deserve. And so it is that this obscure label’s elegant sweaters remain, for the most part, unknown.

knit cashmere reversible jacket

Despite all of this, it would be quite wrong to expect to find the reassuringly traditional styles that are so usual in cashmere sweaters. Oyuna knitwear blends the basic simplicity of its lines with additional key themes,

using overlapping

and double weaves

and asymmetric panels, revealing a design sensitivity that is decidedly modern and open to the influences of the most daring fashion designers in the industry.

Gauze, flannel, and jerseys, are perhaps the most remarkable transformations of this noble raw material, which are decisive in determining its final shape.

Silhouettes and cuts make each piece completely functional and part of the sophisticated collections, which are at times complex though certainly never obvious, that make up the all-new Ivo Milan store collection.

This is a collection to be touched and admired but especially, one that should needs to be worn to appreciate its proportions and unpredictable characteristics.

cashmere knit long top