Looking at the reports from the latest fashion weeks you'd think not much has changed after all in the fashion industry in this post-pandemic world. After all, as IRL runways have come back, luxury brands are once again organising their shows as they used to, while influencers have resumed their peacocking outside the venues, especially in Milan. Yet there are small and tangible changes in the collections with a few up-and-coming labels, among them Vitelli, switching towards more sustainable designs.
Founded in 2016 by Mauro Simionato, the brand's creative director and former co-owner of footwear brand Volta, and Giulia Bortoli, knitwear director, Vitelli wants to spin a sustainable yarn (pun totally intended). Its narrative is indeed steeped in music, Italian manufacturing and knitwear made with recycled materials.
Simionato is into fashion and music, he loves vinyl records and DJing and reunites his passions in a Milan-based space called Organic Knitting Theater inside the Spazio Vitelli in via Felice Casati, a sort of knitting workshop and R&D center complete with small stage and DJ decks. Part of the space is used by a collective of knitwear enthusiasts called Rayon Vert, using waste yarns to make outdoor clothing, accessories and blankets.
Vitelli's first proper collection, showcased during Milan Fashion Week at the Fondazione Sozzani, was produced in the Veneto region, around the Schio and Vicenza areas, and was inspired by Cosmic music and the Hippy Trail.
The former is a reference to cult Italian nightclub Cosmic (View this photo), located in Lazise in the province of Verona, and operating between 1979 and 1984. While its set was inspired by the space aesthetics, with a DJ booth first shaped like a glittery space helmet and then reinvented to look like a small spaceship (View this photo), the club was famous for its eclectic mix of electronic, experimental, funk, African pop and Brazilian music, pioneered by DJs such as Daniele Baldelli, Beppe Loda and Claudio "Mozart" Rispoli.
Readopted by gay and straight clubs in Britain over 10 years ago, Cosmic music was characterised by one very simple point: essentially Baldelli & Co would play the tracks they fancied, often at the wrong speed, and, as they wouldn't understand the content of the lyrics in foreign languages, they would use the voice as an instrument and mix it with other records to produce innovative soundscapes.
That's more or less the idea behind Vitelli's S/S 22 collection: entitled "Gioventù Cosmica 2021 - Parte seconda: Il morso (Bit)" ("Cosmic Youth 2021 - Part II: The Bite (Bit)"), the collection was an attempt at recreating with a mix of recycled yarns the eclectic combination of sounds produced at the Cosmic club and come up with a series of non binary zero-waste garments and accessories inspired by the "Overland" or "Hippie Trail" that many young people followed between the end of the '50s and the '70s and that went from Europe to Goa and Bangkok passing through Kabul and Peshawar.
To make this collection the Vitelli collective that describes itself as "responsible, multi-ethnic punks of Italian couture", didn't start from shapes and silhouettes, but moved from the reclaimed materials they found, mainly piles of deadstock and leftover yarns that they collected from companies that were getting rid of them (the official Instagram page of the brand features posts showing a van full of plastic bags containing spools of deadstock yarns). So the main point was moving from specific inspirations, but working with what they could find.
The results were experimental and multi-layered with the yarns transformed via a variety of techniques including felting into oversized T-shirts and cardigans, cropped bolero jackets, Bermuda shorts and ribbed trousers, sarong-like skirts and shirt dresses, ample caftans and distorted tops, hand-made crocheted accessories and felted clogs.
All the pieces, often in clashing patterns and characterised by densely textured surfaces, incorporated a variety of upcycled fabrics, scraps and yarns.
Will Vitelli manage to survive in a fashion world that is fighting to go back to its pre-pandemic times almost to pretend that nothing happened?
Time will tell, but for the time being, their slow approach to fashion and the resulting sustainable collection made by mixing recycled yarns, just like Baldelli & Co mixed strange and wonderful tracks at the Cosmic, was considered by many as among the freshest collections in Milan (one of their pieces, a cropped striped top, was already spotted on Shawn Mendes at the latest MTV VMAs 2021, View this photo, so the brand is already acquiring a cool aura...). Looks like the Italian capital of fashion may be set on a new course towards sustainability and, thanks to the know-how of Italian manufacturing companies, going green may be a great opportunity for a solid economic recovery.
Comments