Are you a fan of Eileen Gray or Sonia Delaunay? Then chances are that, come next Autumn, you will find the clothes and accessories you're looking for at Salvatore Ferragamo's stores.
Arty graphic lines prevailed in the A/W 15 womenswear collection (as opposed to the menswear collection that moved from folk inspirations): Creative Director Massimiliano Giornetti shattered sensible coats, luxurious mink furs (made by combining several hundred of pieces and strips of coloured fur - imagine a reivented version of the fur coat donned by Jerry Hall in a picture taken by David Bailey in 1983 in Cannes and you get the idea...) and functional day dresses or sensual figure hugging silk chiffon gowns into several geometric figures in strong and bold colours.
Then he reassembled them turning the geometries into intarsia elements or patchworks, coming up with simple, long and fluid silhouettes characterised by rigorous and severe lines.
Ribbed ponchos or capes knitted horizontally matched with turtlenecks and conservative high-waisted leather or tweed pleated skirts with chiffon inserts were perfectly executed and styled and reminded people that, in a few months time, the elegant and sober silhouette, at time cinched at the waist by a knotted belt, will definitely prevail in womenswear. These garments (not included in the images in this post) actually weren't among the pieces that established direct correspondences between art/interior design and fashion.
The geometric dynamism created by the contrasting colours and rich fabrics seemed borrowed from Sonia Delaunay (though at times it also pointed towards the Italian Futurists...).
It is actually impossible not to compare certain pieces from this collection to Sonia Delaunay's paintings, textiles or designs like the coat made for Gloria Swanson in the '20s or her bathing suits from 1928 (View this photo). This shouldn't surprise us, though, since the house of Ferragamo has always been fond of its art references and of Delaunay in particular.
But there was something else in the collection as well: the three large circular resin buttons in brown and black or yellow and red that appeared in the first designs on the runway called to mind the fashion for shiny surfaces and for light manipulation that developed during Art Deco times. This connection actually opened the door to another link, that with Eileen Gray.
The Irish-born artist and designer influenced by the Bauhaus, Art Deco and De Stijl, is actually quite trendy at the moment: Marco Orsini's documentary Gray Matters and Mary McGuckian's feature film The Price of Desire celebrate her, while the controversial Villa e1027 will open its doors to the public this May and the exhibition that rediscovered Gray at the Centre Pompidou in 2013 will soon be travelling to New York and to other locations.
The attention of some critics was firmly on the runway covered in carpets that perfectly matched with the designs (now a firm trend seen also at some of the other runway shows in London and Milan) but, if you looked carefully, the smooth and shiny buttons that decorated some of the garments may have reminded you of the details in Gray's "Chariot" table, while one of the first designs showcased on the Ferragamo runway seemed to replicate in its colour combination the same of shades of a 1928 lacquer screen in wood with silver leaf veneer by Gray.
There is more, though: the sculptural heels (slightly reminiscent at times of Ferragamo's gold sandal with a pyramid heel from 1930 inspired by Art Deco) and intersoles (a trick that Ferragamo used already in 1939-40) were directly borrowed from the archives, but the parabolic yet sinuous quality of some of the heels also made you think about the shape of Gray's swivel cabinet, while the insole pointed towards the geometric frame of the "Transat" chair.
You can't maybe directly link the bags with Gray's "Dragon Chair", but then again it's almost impossible not to find certain correspondences between the round decorative elements on the bags and the round shapes of the armrests.
Eileen Gray experimented with colour and texture (together with textile artist and friend Evelyn Wyld she also opened a weaving studio in Paris to produce carpets and wall hangings based on traditional weaving techniques discovered during their travels in North Western Africa) and so did Giornetti, who manipulated leather and fabrics in search of a new language or fashion code dictated by geometries (geometry was definitely a trend in Milan).
At times Giornetti's good intentions didn't work and the designer risked of being less convincing with his clothes (that were in some cases maybe too reminiscent of Ferragamo's early experiments with art and fashion) than with the accessories. Both the clothes and accessories, though, managed to establish specific relationships with interior design moods, so we'd better keep our eyes open for further fashion/interior design connections during the Paris shows.
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