A weekend in Vienna this season at Max Mara Weekend, where Austrian-born designer Arthur Arbesser referenced the art movements of the capital in an inventive capsule collection.
“Turn of the century Vienna but also doing your own thing,” explained Arbesser, focusing on a historic dance studio, and incorporating elements like checkerboard, oil paintings as prints and even performance pieces. Seen in a light ecru silk dress with red piping, ideal for dancing.
Arthur focused on patchwork prints incorporating lace; full and flouncy striped skirts and dresses; a superb abstract mash-up print dress and a canvas trench – ideal for a weekend in Vienna or anywhere.
His colors are bold – royal blue, mint and soft aubergine; while Max Mara’s Pasticcino bag is given an opera house make over in satin.
“Giorgio Guidotti (Max Mara global comms chief) called me, and said forget your fashion background, think about furniture and design,” said Arbesser, who has previously designed ballet costumes.
The 20-piece capsule’s look-book and video was shot in Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts, starring Kristen McMenamy. Normally, Max Mara Weekend partners with architects, photographers and stylists,” so I felt very lucky I am the first fashion designer they asked,” explained Arbesser.
All presented inside Milan’s Building Art gallery featuring artwork by Harush Shlomo- including a marvelous metallic equestrian statue, where the horse bears a score of silver suitcases that break through the glass roof.
Rather fantastical, just like this collection which was entitled Phantasie.
Max & Co: Souvenir chic
Max & Co’s latest designer collab’ is with Chufy, the nickname and brand of Sofia Sanchez de Betak, indie designer and all-round Argentine It Gal, who took a very liberating approach to the concept.
Entitled ‘Souvenirs of Life’, Sofia ranged around her travel memories to dream up a remarkably diverse range of clothes. Like a great café hued denim jacket on whose back a hummingbird spreads its wings, or a super rusty red linen jacket featuring sewn and hanging Mexican motifs.
Sofia began the project by visiting the famously vast Max Mara archives and vintage fashion collection in the brand’s Reggio Emilia, which was “so inspiring and so overwhelming, that when I got back to the hotel I realized that instead of one precise theme, I had to go back to my own direct experiences and the little imprints of life – scuba diving or a landscape or having a kid – for this collection.”
The result was a blend of Asia, Africa and her native Latin America – made in soft, comfortable and light fabrics. All to be launched in February next year. Including fine quality embroidery artfully stitched onto linen wrap coats inspired by visits to Ukraine and Arizona. The Capsule even includes boots, woven leather sandals and some great classic baskets, riffing a little on Sofia’s hometown Buenos Aires.
Tivoli: Family firm, finely made fashion
Italy never ceases to surprise when it comes to high quality brands – like Tivoli.
A family-owned business based in Torino, Tivoli’s DNA is all about adventurous voyage. Notable in a great series of colorful shearlings finished with clever shards and stripes of fabric culled from trips to Morocco.
“No two coats are the same,” explains Clemente Tivoli, a scion of the family in the brand’s central Milan boutique on via Santo Spirito.
Tivoli also showed finely deconstructed blazers and trench-coats made in impeccable calf skin. Along with creamy cashmere sweaters, again trimmed with Moroccan linen print fragments and collars.
All presented inside an airy story on via Santo Spirito, boasting a classy modernist wooden staircase by Gae Aulenti, no less.
Plan C: From Yelena to Ginza
A meeting of fine art photography, design and fashion at Plan C this season, whose latest collection was shot by Ukrainian photographer Yelena Yemchuk.
Coolly capturing the subtle style of Plan C’s designer Carolina Castiglioni.
Like shiny ecru nylon parkas with interior red tape; canvas slip dresses with floral sequins; V-shaped white T-shirts with neat sculptural shapes and some brilliant paper leather jackets.
Castiglioni has also added denim to her range – again impressing with flared jeans with no outside seam. And even a dash of sexual frisson with sequined sports bras, a nice addition to a range that could be a tad too demure.
This brand is very much on the move. It has just opened a store inside shopping mecca Ginza 6, bringing to three its shops in Tokyo; along with a fourth in Seoul. Plan C also retails in some 200 doors internationally.
And is clearly enjoying Milan Fashion Week, showing Yemchuk’s photo shoot, part of which was incorporated into a series of constructivist collages. Art, commerce and cool happily coexisting.
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