Let’s continue today the menswear thread I started yesterday focusing this time on menswear fabrics and textiles.
In Italy there was a real boom in the 60s for what regarded the choice of special summery fabrics for men’s suits.
Many tailors at the time started experimenting with lighter fabrics.
Often described as “tropical” or “cool textiles”, they mainly consisted in gabardine, linen, luxurious woollen and silk blends or opaque and shiny shantung fabrics.
For the Spring/Summer 1962 season Brioni presented in Florence a collection including classic suits, but also more casual jackets characterised by dynamic cuts.
Among the most interesting pieces of that collection there was also a series of evening jackets in printed silk, with colourful damasked or geometrical motifs.
I have managed to find in my personal archive of images one photograph of that collection and, though it’s in black and white, the more I look at it, the more it makes me think about the recent collaboration between British textile weaver Margo Selby and London-based The Old Curiosity Shop.
Selby trained at the Chelsea College of Art and later on pursued an MA at the Royal College of Art.
After carrying out further researches on woven textiles at the Ann Sutton Foundation, where she also mixed her knowledge of hand-woven techniques with industrial machinery creating unique 3-dimensional fabrics, Selby launched her first collection in 2003.
Four years later, she opened a shop-cum-gallery and studio in London.
A recipient of many textile and design awards, Selby’s fabrics are distinctively recognisable, thanks to their bold colour combinations and geometric patterns.
Her works, designed on a handloom and then produced at specialist mills, display a great research for what regards fibre combination and structure.
Selby employed her fabric for a number of interior design objects, but also for small accessories including bags, purses and ties.
So far she has collaborated with various partners developing products for Habitat, People Will Always Need Plates and museums such as London’s museums and galleries including Tate, The British Museum, The National Gallery and The Hayward Gallery.
The new collaboration started after Selby and Daita Kimura, creative director of The Old Curiosity Shop, met: Selby developed with the shop a range of fashion items including shoes and boots, made using her distinctive woven fabrics, and a range of unisex jackets dedicated to all the people who love colour and patterns (available through the Oki-Ni website).
I find this interpretation of Selby's fabrics rather interesting as it may open new channels and lead to further collaborations between textile designers using traditional techniques in their work and also focusing on interior design projects, and fashion designers.
It will be interesting to see if such experiments will develop a new fashion narrative in menswear, reinventing and invigorating traditional fabrics through intriguing experiments with modern synthetic textiles.
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