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.
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.
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.
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: 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 workshop 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.
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