After the dubious Aelita connection and a lingering obsession with Catholicism and after Givenchy announcing it was going to suspend its Haute Couture line and would not show during the Paris schedule this January, it was only natural to think that Tisci had maybe lost original ideas to work with.
Yet Givenchy's Pre-Fall 2013 collection showed he has maybe found a safe ground that could lead to interesting, saleable and wearable inspirations not just for him, but for other designers as well - architecture.
Some of the unnecessary ruffles from his Spring/Summer 13 womenswear collection reappeared here and there, together with images of the Virgin Mary imported from his S/S 13 menswear designs, but the best pieces were the ones based on clean and rigorous masculine and architectural sharp lines including skirt-trouser combo suits and one-sleeve asymmetrical dresses or long dresses with an open side seam revealing men's trousers underneath matched with men's shoes.
This collection was apparently inspired by Walter Albini (also known as the Italian Yves Saint-Laurent, a forward-thinker, a man who, anticipating the "made in Italy" concept, reinterpreted the past and wrote the future but died too young to actually enjoy the fruits of his work) and by architect and interior designer Gio Ponti.
Albini was definitely echoed in the masculine suits, but also in the coats and capes that called to mind his early '80s outerwear with geometric motifs in brown, black and grey (View this photo).
Tisci's camel, white and black fractured mosaic patterns replicated on cashmere jersey dresses referenced Ponti's geometric diamond-shaped elements (though it must be highlighted that Ponti had a soft spot for white and blue, while Tisci opted for a darker palette) in the murals at Villa Arreaza in Caracas, Venezuela, his designs for the thirty different tiles employed in the rooms at the Hotel Parco dei Principi in Sorrento and the furnishings for the same hotel as deconstructed and reassembled by Martino Gamper.
White and blue geometries became a sort of obsession for Gio Ponti who replicated them on the tiles, fabrics and pieces of furniture at the Hotel Parco dei Principi; in the same way the geometric elements in this collection subtly appear on some part of the garments or completely cover them.
Tisci also turned architectural structures such as Ponti's Concattedrale Gran Madre di Dio in Taranto (perfectly understandable since Tisci was born in Taranto) with its punctured concrete structure inspired by a boat and a castle into a stylised pattern that reappeared on tops, bomber jackets and linear one sleeve dresses.
While this collection may prove that simply defined geometries and architectural and modernist shapes and silhouettes can be pretty successful in fashion, a problem remains with Tisci: in his Spring/Summer 2013 collection he referenced Carlo Mollino who, like Gio Ponti, is a famous post-War Italian architect. So Tisci may sooner or later become a bit too predictable in his architectural references, though, who knows, maybe at some point he will go backwards to Piero Portaluppi or forward to Vico Magistretti. Time will tell, in the meantime architectural bets are open.
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