We don’t have half-seasons anymore!

This popular saying has never been as real and true to its meaning. After two months of torrential rainfalls and winter temperatures, suddenly, summer is here.

During this period, it’s hard to choose what to wear, not to feel cold or suffer from the heat throughout the day. Incidentally, due to the difficulty of finding raw materials, the deliveries of the goods were delayed, which made the selection of the stores inconsistent and incoherent with the weights of the fabrics suitable during this season. Even making our catalog took a long time because we had to wait for the seasonal selection to arrive.

Now that we’ve finally finished this task, we can offer original combinations: the periodical Mix-and-Match, where we combine the garments on our catalog in fresh and alternative ways.

Here we are with Lucia, our model, outside of the static frame of our website, on the streets of Padua, near our store, combining garments and brands to discover new dimensions, chromatic palettes, and adaptability to contexts and formal or informal situations.

Noir Kei Ninomiya realized this skirt with the typical formal exuberance of the Japanese school. Its central theme is not the feminine silhouette but its narrative potential, which reveals multiple interpretations: from the pronounced femininity with the tapered gilet in washed linen and the fitted tube top in elastic silk froissé by Marc Le Bihan…

… to a more relaxed everyday expression with the oversized sweater by Album di Famiglia…

… or a sophisticated and uncommon ensemble with the sartorial jacket, hand finished, in linen and cotton gauze by Archivio JM Ribot.

With a different gaze, we can match this blueish gilet/shirt in washed linen by Forme d’Expression with this wide trousers in tubular knit made of linen and cotton by Archivio JM Ribot.

Ultimately we close this first June Mix and Match with a made-in-Italy outfit with this paint−like silk jacket printed bt the historic company Fissore, the neutral colors of the sage shirt by Album di Famiglia and the skirt made of a light linen, cashmere, and silk knit by Boboutic.

The bags are made in Italy by Amine and Numero 10, while the shoes are the Marisa’s by Trippen for Ivo Milan.

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.

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…

At the acme of summer, the first winter arrivals distract us from the high temperatures and from the phlegmatic calm of the semi-deserted cities.

In the store we can taste the new season that day by day takes shape around the choices made six months ago, during the Milan and Paris orders.

There’s no need to be distracted though, because the news will be really exciting: authors like Marc Le Bihan, Renli Su and many other surprises, unprecedented poetics that will integrate the already available assortment, projecting us onto truly prolific, cultured and ingenious global modernity.

While waiting a quick look at the new arrivals, from Daniela Gregis to Boboutic, the 132. 5 by Issey Miyake, the nuno felt of Cri-S and the Trippen shoes…