Ones to Watch: Four New Names to Know at Milan Fashion Week
From left: Ilenia Durazzi, Giulio Sapio, Francesco Murano and Lara Chamandi. COURTESY IMAGES.
MILAN — A industry veteran leaving her behind-the-scenes comfort zone to launch her own brand; the designer committed to traveling the world with his fashion-in-a-container format; a Lebanese talent celebrating the lunar energy, and a young creative already endorsed by Beyoncé: these are the new names to know and emerging brands to watch during Milan Fashion Week.
DURAZZI MILANO
Ilenia Durazzi COURTESY OF DURAZZI MILANO
Don’t be fooled by Ilenia Durazzi’s low-key ways and soft-spoken tone: the Millennial designer is already a veteran of the fashion industry with a precise vision and serious ambitions for the brand she is set to debut at Milan Fashion Week.
A graduate of Polimoda in Florence, the Italian talent has a strong menswear background, great passion for contemporary art — which was further boosted by her relationship with partner, artist Maurizio Cattelan — and a major penchant for architecture and its intrinsic value of putting design at the service of functionality. All these elements were poured into the womenswear brand she will introduce via a digital presentation on Feb. 24.
“I’ve always designed menswear, so I wanted to work on a brand for women by a woman and overturn the perspective of a male gaze through which we are usually seen,” said Durazzi, who cut her teeth more than a decade ago in Paris at Balenciaga, rising to head designer for men’s shoes and accessories under then-creative director Nicolas Ghesquière, followed three years later by a post as menswear head designer at Maison Margiela.
“I don’t like to use the word feminist because somehow there’s always some connotation of anger linked to it.…But that same wish for empowerment is intrinsic both to my persona and my design,” she said.
As result, the brand’s fall 2022 collection will offer Durazzi’s version of Amazons, as an equestrian theme runs through the sleek lineup that includes leather dresses, ribbed knits and quilted miniskirts, which are also reworked in asymmetric silhouettes recalling a saddle’s shape. Horses’ skin patterns are evoked by holes on leather pants and metallic eyelets scattered on beautifully executed tailoring, which best reveal Durazzi’s expert hand and the influence of Italian Rationalism and architect Carlo Scarpa’s work on her designs.
“The most simple and rigorous thing is the most difficult to realize, because there’s no margin of error and you need to balance what is needed,” said Durazzi. “I find there are often clothes that seem like toys. My idea is to offer something concrete,” she said.
But in her aesthetics, this concept doesn’t coincide with boring, as she introduced an eccentric touch via furry mohair piping on stockings, quilted jackets, knitted separates and baseball caps, in a nod to Meret Oppenheim’s artworks.
A look from the Durazzi Milano fall 2022 collection. COURTESY OF DURAZZI MILANO
Boasting a luxury positioning, the brand is the fruit of a long consideration initiated after Durazzi returned to Italy in 2018, while she continued to collaborate with luxury houses and to fuel her multidisciplinary approach with art and music projects.
“I reached a moment when I didn’t find a meaning or felt satisfied at big brands. I wanted to express myself and join forces with people, which is something that started to happen in the evenings, resulting in some projects.…And then there was COVID-19 and one started to question what really wants to do. That was the definitive step that convinced me to launch the brand,” she said.
The ultimate mission is to expand Durazzi Milano into other domains, including menswear and interior, with the goal of creating a comprehensive lifestyle brand. “One for the new generation, because what’s that label now for people my age? I couldn’t find it.” — Sandra Salibian
SAPIO
Sapio’s designer Giulio Sapio. COURTESY OF SAPIO
Attendees of Milan Fashion Week may be puzzled at the view of a container taking over a neighbor’s courtyard in the heart of the city center.
The structure, covered in sleek black paint, is being employed by Giulio Sapio to unveil his fall collection in the most unexpected of ways — one which experts in guerrilla marketing would likely applaud. Inside, the container is outfitted in plush ocher suede and features racks displaying his coed effort, in which each garment is replicated exactly as is for both genders, with some fit adjustments.
A retail veteran for 10 years and a bass player, Sapio was Rick Owens’ right-hand man when the American designer set sail for Europe in the early 2000s and quickly built his fashion reputation.
After a long-standing experience at the side of the designer, he “felt the urgency to tell my idea of fashion,” as he put it, and launched his Sapio brand during the lockdown in 2020, embarking on a roving trip across Italy with a trunk installed inside a van to display the first collection and reach out to local buyers.
For fall, the format was magnified via the container, with which the designer plans, pandemic allowing, to travel the world and touch down in London, Paris or even Tokyo and Shanghai.
Sapio described the container and his fashion as treasure chests encapsulating his memories and desires. This personal take is reflected by the designer and his partner modeling the looks during a preview walkthrough.
Built on crafted wardrobe staples — sartorial pants, elongated blazer and blazers-slash-coats, capes, and impalpable underpinnings — the fall collection is a sophisticated and refined example of fabric research and sartorial prowess. Bouclé tweed is used for suits with high-cuffed pants and collarless blazers, while shiny leather is worked into fitted bomber jackets and sleek double-breasted trenchcoats, multifiber velour gives a furry and luxurious effect to capes and short-shorts, while wool is hand turned into fisherman overcoats.
Francesco Murano COURTESY OF FRANCESCO MURANO
When A-listers tap into an up-and-coming designer, it’s typically a boost of unexpected visibility, which can require some adjustment.
Francesco Murano was about to graduate from Milan’s Istituto Europeo di Design when Beyoncé requested some of his creations for her music video “Spirit.” The global star ended up putting on a pair of stilettos laid on a square-shaped sole, which catapulted Murano onto the international radar. The link grew in scope when the artist requested Murano to create a gown for her personal wardrobe, which he could never have expected her to wear when attending the official pre-Grammy 2020 party.
“She wearing my clothes was a turning point for my career, and also a sign because everybody who knows me knows how much of a Beyoncé fan I am,” Murano offered.
Working with celebrities shaped Murano’s vision for his brand, which three years later, having powered through the pandemic, is based on a made-to-measure distribution model, which according to the designer allows for more flexibility. His spring 2021 collection was rewarded with the Who’s On Next talent search’s top prize for womenswear, but he skipped spring 2022.
Now he’s back in force and for the first time the brand is part of the official Milan Fashion Week calendar. For his 10-look fall 2022 collection, to be unveiled with a presentation on Feb. 23, Murano deployed his knowledge of architecture, tapping into the Modulor — the anthropometric scale of proportions devised by the Swiss-born French architect Le Corbusier.
The designer built his razor-sharp tailored looks and drapey, folded and ruched gowns — the latter crafted from jersey supplied by Luxury Jersey — starting from rectangles and squares, adjusted so that the body can fit in them and letting the extra fabric sprout and dangle from the silhouettes. He stuck to the dusty color palette he’s known for, which includes grays, blush pink and petroleum blue.
Murano’s penchant for sculptural silhouettes was drawn partly from his appreciation of couture and from his love affair with Greece, where his father used to work, and Greek culture.
A look from Francesco Murano fall 2022. COURTESY OF FRANCESCO MURANO
“The idea of manipulation, which is part of my lexicon, was born organically. It responds to my two-sided personality. I tend to appear as an introvert, shy person when in fact I’m very much extrovert. As I was working on my graduate collection, this acknowledgment had me thinking about the contrast between rationality and impulsiveness,” or the dualism of Apollonian and Dionysian spirits which Friedrich Nietzsche theorized, the designer explained.
He acknowledged that expanding distribution is key, although he primarily plans to grow the brand’s bespoke service to tap into fans of celebrities like Cardi B, another music star he dressed for the music video of her hit song “Up,” and women seeking tailor made suits.
After dressing A-listers in his early stages, one can’t help but wonder who Murano’s dream client is: as a hint, the designer mentioned his admiration of movie stars Jane Fonda and Meryl Streep. — M.C.
LARA CHAMANDI
Lara Chamandi COURTESY OF LARA CHAMANDI
When she moved from Lebanon to London to study furniture design in 2013, Lara Chamandi hadn’t envisioned a future in fashion — yet. She approached it step by step: she started experimenting with materials during her studies and developed a passion for this kind of research. She nurtured it by working on the development of a patent-pending sustainable plant-based leather.
The project sparked in her the idea of launching a luxury fashion brand rooted in a conscious ethos, one that not only took into account humans’ respect and relationship with nature, but also the connection with their inner self.
In her journey to express this message of self care through clothes, she found an ally in the moon, which has always played a big role in her life as deeply linked to a favorite place in her homeland: the Monastery of the Moon in Lebanon’s Chouf Mountains region.
The lunar element informs many aspects of the namesake brand she established after moving to Milan in 2020 and that she’s presenting via private appointments. In her inaugural effort, the feminine energy of the moon is channeled in the seductive vibe of the fall 2022 lineup, which plays with transparencies, cutouts, asymmetries and silhouettes wrapping around the body without constraining it. The moon’s influence on tides and the movement of water is evoked in the liquid — and all-natural — fabrics and fluid, elongated proportions, which convey an overall relaxed attitude to dressed and deconstructed suits.
The symbolic narrative is enriched with nods to constellations in crisscross details on the back of dresses, as well as zodiac signs, especially Scorpio, which the designer favors “because it’s the only one that transforms itself.”
Although references abound in her fashion, Chamandi likes to keep her aesthetic simple and versatile to best enable her woman to feel free and comfortable with herself. To elevate her essential lines, she only uses some talismans here and there, such as quartz details punctuating knitted dresses and skirts.
A look from the Lara Chamandi fall 2022 collection. COURTESY OF LARA CHAMANDI
While for the next collection she will further explore this category with the launch of a jewelry line, Chamandi is to debut the brand’s e-commerce on March 2 — the day of the new moon, of course — offering a special capsule collection of 20 pieces for spring. — S.S.
