The Tamesis
Ten years have passed since Giuseppe Di Morabito showed his first collection in a plaster interior in Milan. “Franca Sozzani was there,” he recalls, “I remember it very clearly.” Yesterday, the photos returned to the Napoleonic neoclassical Palazzo Appiani and Milan Civic Arena. Instead of a catwalk, Di Morabito hosted an intimate dinner, followed by a masquerade party dressed in white. “I looked at the calendar and saw it was Carnival time, so I thought: why not have a ball? I felt the desire to turn this Winter Fashion Week moment into something more symbolic,” he said. As a result, friends and family sat at long tables filled with candlesticks and statues, many wearing classic pieces from the brand.
However, the real show unfolds on the illuminated staircase overlooking the arena, where the collectible “Venus Within” appears motionless and petrified. “We studied all the installations as if they were contemporary artifacts,” explains Di Morabito. Each figure is coated in resin, frozen in the middle pose as if struck by a contemporary Medusa. “The concept is fragmentation,” he added. “In the sculpture, there is the perfection of Canova, but there is also the broken torso, the mutilation, even more emotional.”
The material work is among his most complex to date: entirely hand-stitched silk tubular elements and interlaced anatomical surfaces; tulle lace embroidered with pearls and balls of wool for added density; stabilized real hydrangeas mounted on trousers; feathered collars hovering between protection and decoration, and leather orchids placed on frilly skirts. The new gold look marks the first time the metal has entered the market as an entire garment rather than an accessory. “The techniques are new and it’s a boundary-pushing exercise,” he explains.
The tension between masculine rigor and ultra-feminine structure remained central: tailored blazers were paired with serious off-set organza dresses embellished with hanging flower stems. The leather treatment mimics the aging effect of denim, another first for the brand. Although 10 years have passed since the plaster sculpture, the obsession remains the same: the body as sculpture, memory and fragment. But the difference is scale and confidence.
