One of many: Anna Ceccon’s Moi Multiple

The collection presentations of brand Moi Multiple by designer Anna Ceccon have so far recalled a sort of old school style, when fashion houses opted to showcase their new designs at their headquarters, usually flats turned into ateliers.

Ceccon presented her S/S 09 collection at the house of her flamboyant friend, countess Pinina Garavaglia, the queen of Milanese nightlife, while her A/W 09 collection was showcased in the Milan-based flat of a university lecturer friend.

Yet there is a fundamental difference between Ceccon’s presentations and those first catwalk shows: the former usually have a strong connection with the world of art.

Entitled “Deceptive Perception”, Ceccon’s A/W 09 collection was for example inspired by the work of painter Egon Schiele and originally presented in a Milan-based flat by models and young actresses wearing Moi Multiple designs and moving around the rooms reciting snippets of letters, writings and poems by Schiele.

The walls of the house where the collection was showcased, decorated with William Morris wallpaper, were also enriched by collages of drawings and photographs exclusively created by artist Anna Resmini for Moi Multiple.

Ceccon was among the finalists of the "Who Is On Next?" (Womenswear Category) and had the chance to present her Moi Multiple collection to a wider audience during the July AltaRoma event where she also won the Red Dress Italia Award, an initiative meant as a tribute to the red dress aimed at raising awareness and promote the research on cardiovascular diseases launched by Elizabeth Arden and the Fondazione Italiana per il Cuore.

Question: Was becoming a fashion designer what you always wanted to do in your life?
Anna Ceccon: I actually come from a family of lawyers and studied physics at university. One of my first forays into the world of fashion was a few years ago in London where I started designing resin jewellery and bags. Back to Italy I sold them to relatives and friends, but also at Fiorucci’s. Vogue dedicated me at the time a little column and, thanks to it, I convinced my family that maybe fashion was a viable career, so I enrolled at the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED, European Design Institute) and soon started working as an intern with different companies and designers, such as Giorgio Fornasiero and Aldo Brué. After I finished my studies I won the second prize at the Mittelmoda award and began collaborating with other designers, while working at La Perla and also teaching at the IED.

Question: What prompted you to launch Moi Multiple and where does the name of the brand come from?
Anna Ceccon: I felt ready to start working on my own collections and decided to launch the brand even though this is a financially critical moment for everybody, because I see the crisis as an opportunity to do new and exciting things. I chose the name of the brand with a very simple idea in mind: I work in different fields and environments and during the day I turn into many different women with a wide range of roles. So I wanted to create a brand that evoked in its name this identity changing process and that could describe all those women who like to reinvent themselves every season and every day with a different personality.

Question: What’s the first thing you do when you start designing a collection?
Anna Ceccon: I consider the research process as a fundamental part of my work. I usually start from an idea, a work of art or an experience I lived in my private life and then develop this idea looking for a material that goes well with the theme I have chosen. I love working with unusual materials.

Question: What inspired your S/S 09 collection and which fabrics did you choose for it?
Anna Ceccon: It was inspired by a friend of mine, a performance artist, who died a while back. I took all the basic elements of a garment – collars, cuffs and buttonholes for example – and stripped them of their functions, reapplying these elements in the reverse side of simple organza dresses. Applying the collars and bras in the reverse side and embroidering the buttons, I stripped all these elements of their functions, turning them into mere shadows of what they actually are. All these details were applied to organza dresses to create a sort of X-rayed effect. The organza dresses with splashes were instead inspired by Alberto Burri’s combustion cycles. I mixed two of his paintings, blew them up and printed them on the dresses. I also applied the same effects to my resin jewellery and resin elements on shoes and sandals. For what regards the materials I mainly used silk organza, which is transparent, yet rigid, but also a type of double and triple organza that has the consistency of paper. One of my students from Japan sent me a paper fibre fabric similar to cotton but with the rigidity of paper and I employed it for a sculptural dress. I also experimented further with different meshed fabrics and special treatments designing an orange nylon and silk trench coat that looks very rigid, though it’s actually extremely light.

Question: Is there a main theme behind your A/W 09 collection?
Anna Ceccon: I often think that rather than designing a collection I tell stories. This collection is in fact the story of a "rational" madness. My A/W 09 designs are dedicated to madness, mathematical language and Egon Schiele’s art. I interpreted madness as the absence of limits and conceived the garments as if a mentally disturbed person who doesn’t know anything about designing a skirt or a jacket, had designed them. This is why I deconstructed and reconstructed traditional silhouettes, I multiplied collars and lapels and designed a pair of trousers that can be turned into a dress. While designing this collection I was mesmerised by Schiele’s lines and by his chromatic palette, those beige, ochre and grey nuances. I also explored the possibilities offered by geometries: two fabric circles are joined together to form a jacket or a rectangle with sleeves creates a reversible jacket in silk and viscose velvet, two materials reworked with a knitwear-like technique. I also did some three-dimensional trompe l’oeil pieces: you may have the illusion of seeing a jacket, a waistcoat and a skirt, but the three pieces are actually one dress.

Question: Which materials did you choose for your accessories?
Anna Ceccon: Mainly plexiglass that I employed to make bras and collar-shaped necklaces with lace inserts. For the S/S 09 collection I also designed necklaces with resin that recreated the effects of Burri’s combustions while the A/W 09 collection includes a few grosgrain and steel necklaces and oversized plexiglass pieces that look like armour breastplates and that can be worn on a simple white T-shirt.

Question: You shot a brief film to present your first collection and launched your collections with unusual events in Milan-based private houses. Do you feel more at ease showcasing your work through these events than through conventional catwalk shows?
Anna Ceccon: My collections often need to be explained and I opted for such presentations since I wanted to make sure people could get into my world and my inspirations. Presenting the collections in private houses allows me to create little itineraries through my designs. I purposely presented my S/S 09 collection at Pinina Garavaglia’s house since its interior design is prevalently baroque and she has quite a few wooden statues and Flemish paintings, so the models stood as still as possible next to these art pieces, almost recreating mesmerising tableaux vivants. Visitors could walk around the different rooms of the house following a journey through different themes, from movement to combustion.

Question: What do you like/dislike about fashion?
Anna Ceccon: I don’t like throwaway fashion, I like timeless designs and things that last and I guess this aspect doesn’t really go well with the fashion industry. Yet, though I can conceive a garment as 'transitory', I think that behind it there must be a solid and timeless concept.

Question: Who is your favourite designer and who would you like to collaborate with one day?
Anna Ceccon: Rather than fashion itself I like the art, research, concepts and ideas behind it, this is why I love Japanese designers such as Issey Miyake and admire Martin Margiela, Hussein Chalayan and Antonio Marras’ work. I would like to collaborate one day with two directors, Korean Kim Ki-duk and Japanese Takeshi Kitano.

Question: You like art a lot, if you could afford it, would you create a beautiful extravagant collection?
Anna Ceccon: I have a limitless creativity and I think it would be easy for me to create a beautiful and extravagant collection that flattered my ego, but I think the most difficult thing for a designer is to create something minimal yet distinctive, and this is what I’m focusing on at the moment. The challenge nowadays is trying to make a beautiful jacket or dress in a historically difficult moment in which fashion must take care of daily needs and reach out to as many people as possible with beautiful yet affordable things.

Question: What are your plans for the future?
Anna Ceccon: Developing my collections while continuing working at La Perla and teaching at the IED, but also focusing on a new project, my workshop called “L’.Abilità”. The works
hop name is a pun on the Italian words “abilità”, skillfullness, and “labilità”, lack of skillfuness. Working only in the fashion business would be extremely limiting for myself since I like a lot researching into different fields and I hope that this workshop will allow me to develop projects about architecture, gardening, interior and industrial design and even food.