“It is the big dreams that make people big. Small ones are desires. One should not be afraid to be ‘exaggerated’… at least in dreams.” Lorenzo Serafini used this Franca Sozzani quote in the notes for a show that represented, for him, the actualization of a very big (yet unexpected) dream: his debut as creative director at Alberta Ferretti.
As laid out in his preview interview, last October Ferretti handed Serafini creative oversight of the label she founded in 1981. As president and co-founder of Aeffe Group, which owns and operates the brand alongside Moschino, Ferretti was here tonight to see her anointed successor’s first addition to her design legacy. It must have felt strange to watch someone else taking the bow under her name, but Serafini—who previously worked within Aeffe for a decade as creative director of Philosophy—did her proud.
The venue was Palazzo Donizetti, Aeffe’s showroom since 1994 and the site of many Ferretti shows during the years afterwards, although not of late. The return, meant by Serafini to signal both respect and modesty, was highly effective: the venue’s luxurious intimacy and authentic identity as the Milanese home of the house accentuated the sensuality, frankness (and Franca-ness) that Serafini was working to transmit. The Sozzani factor was thanks to the late great Vogue Italia’s friendship with Ferretti, and her inspirational status for Serafini. Alongside the founder, Sozzani acted as the spiritual muse for this collection.
Entitled Progressive Romantics, the collection was Serafini’s attempt to reframe Ferretti’s romantic and feminocentric design lineage through his own also-romantic and indisputably male (yet also feminocentric) eye—all the while insistently rejecting nostalgia or over-direct archival referencing. Some of the results reminded me of the title of Karl Lagerfeld’s 2017/18 Cruise collection at Chanel: La Modernite De L’Antiquite. For while you could recognize Hellenic and Romanesque references in the drape and cut of these gowns, not to mention some more contemporary mid-century heritage in the raw edged tailoring in soft cashmere herringbone or the dramatic cutaways at the back of some dresses (look 20 most of all), the prism through which Serafini presented these fragments resulted in a mosaic whose image felt fresh.
Serafini used uncollared double cashmere coats, oversized shearlings, or layered cashmere scarves as an enveloping embrace of the dresses below. Tailoring was softened through sheer materiality, light ruffling at its hems and edges, trains and beaded detailing on half-detached jacket collars. His dresses bounced with hand pleating and ruffle—especially swoonsomely romantic on a closing look that comprised 45 meters of hand-pleated chiffon—yet which even here never seemed fussy or elaborate. Despite his emphasis on “sensuality rather than sexiness” I heard one female showgoer glowingly reference the collection as “very after-sex.” Most of the visual stimulation was generated through silhouette and movement, but there were flashes of decoration. These included the handmade resin buttons and jewelry created by a female Cypriot artist: each piece was like an ancient cameo portrait. Look 13’s velvet dress was criss-crossed with a dark floral mesh, while a brooding orchid bloomed abstract and oversize across the shoulder of Look 19.
Under Ferretti’s banner, Serafini set out his stall this evening as a designer dedicated to shaping a form of contemporary romanticism. Romance is a promisingly underexplored value in contemporary fashion, yet romance is also part of our universal emotional language: the lingua franca of love. This highly promising start left you excited for the second date.
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