Italian designer Gabriele Colangelo developed throughout the years an in-depth knowledge of fabrics, textile elaborations and dyes: he originally comes from a family of furriers, but diversified his experience working for other companies and often travelling to Japan to study the local fabrics.
Having an arty sensibility means that Colangelo spent the last few years trying to inject his passion for art into wearable pieces. The main inspiration behind the S/S 19 collection was for example Franco-Hungarian artist Simon Hantaï.
Hantaï moved to Paris at the end of the '40s and, after a first fascination with Surrealism, he began experimenting with other art forms: in the '50s he spent for example an entire year covering a canvas with handwritten texts copied from books on religion, art, poetry, and philosophy, layering them until they could no longer be read.
He then turned to abstractions and developed the technique of "pliage": he started folding, tying, even stepping on his canvases prior to applying paint. He would then wait for the canvases to dry before unfolding them and revealing unexpected images or patterns created by painted areas and blank sections.
Colangelo's designs, showcased during Milan Fashion Week, were characterised by streamlined silhouettes and a layered style with skirt suits matched with georgette pants or slip dresses layered on trousers, maybe a styling option dictated by a will to indirectly referencing Hantaï's process of layering texts on canvases.
The experiments with pliage and in particular Hantaï's "Studies", inspired the main part of the collection (folding is also a reference to origami, something that fits with Colangelo's Japanese sensibility…): Hantaï's cracked surfaces, especially in deep shades of blue were replicated onto white coats, skirts and slip dresses producing a final effect similar to tie-dye.
Cotton was painted and knotted, immersed in a dye and then unknotted: like Hantaï Colangelo turned absence into presence, prompting people to look at the white on his designs not as a background colour, but as a dynamic part of the design.
The aesthetic was minimal, but there were intricate surface elaborations adding a tactile quality to his designs: sparkles of gold orange provided a variation in this collection that mainly revolved around a white, indigo and navy palette with some flashes of jade. The orange tones breaking through the fabric of a trench coat and a skirt dress may have been a reference to the kintsugi and kintsukuroi techniques.
Hantaï's gridded compositions called "Tabulas" inspired instead checkered obi belts marking the waist on trouser suits and sporty dresses.
The unfolding process inspired to Colangelo softer lines, less rigorous than his usual ones, while leather apron-like skirts and contrast-stitched seaming on jackets and shirts pointed at the designer's experience on the factory floor.
Aside from the textile reference, there is actually another connection between Colangelo and Hantaï: in 1983 the artist refused a commission to decorate the ceiling of the Brussels Opera House, stating, "The art market is the greatest danger that modern art has to face…money decides what art gets made. Our only defense is to refuse to participate." (Hantaï eventually ceased to exhibit in galleries).
Colangelo has undoubtedly got a great knowledge when it comes to fabrics and textiles, he is never vulgar nor extremely conceptual and favours slow experimentations to the relentless fast rhythms that are killing fashion and to superficial trends.
It is only natural therefore for him to reject a fashion industry that revolves around the same mechanism that, as Hantaï stated, represented (but still represents nowadays…) a threat to the art market – money – and a fashion scene mainly promoting designs that look instantly good on social media, but that are not destined to last. Shame that a high quality fabric or an experimental surface eleboration are much more difficult to explain on Instagram than a sparkling coat made of colourful tinsel foil, but the time will definitely come when knowledge will replace mere visual pleasure. Hopefully Colangelo will resist till then.
