It’s been 10 years since Giuseppe Di Morabito presented his first collection inside a gypsotheque in Milan. “Franca Sozzani was there,” he recalled, “I remember it clearly.” Yesterday, those images returned to Napoleon’s neoclassical Palazzina Appiani at Milan’s Arena Civica. Instead of a runway, Di Morabito held an intimate dinner followed by a masquerade ball with a white dress code. “I looked at the calendar and saw that it was carnival time, so I thought: why not stage a ball? I felt the urge to turn the moments of this winter fashion week into something more symbolic.” He said. As such, friends and family filled long tables with candles and casts of statues, many wearing pieces from the brand’s archives.
The real show, however, was coming on the illuminated steps overlooking the arena, where the collection, The Inner Venice, appeared vibrant, awe-inspiring. “We studied all the installations as if they were contemporary artefacts,” Di Morabito explained. Each look was a resin-coated, frozen mid-gesture, as if struck by a contemporary Medusa. “The concept is a fragment,” he added, “there is Canova’s brilliance in sculpture, but then the broken torso, mutilated, is even more emotional.”
The material work was his most complex work to date: silk tubular elements entirely hand-stitched and interlocked onto physical surfaces. The gusseted lace was embroidered with beads and balls of wool for density. Steady real hydrangeas were embedded on the pants; Feathered collars hover between protection and embellishment, and rest on leather orchid peplum skirts. A new form of gold marked the first time the metal entered as a complete outfit rather than an accessory. “All these techniques are new, it’s an exercise in pushing the boundaries,” he explained.
The tension between masculine rigor and hyper-feminine construction remained central: tailored blazers cut with sober offset organza dresses interspersed with hanging flower stems. The leather treatment mimics the aging of the denim, another first for the brand. Although 10 years have passed since the gypsotheque, the obsession was the same: sculpture, memory, and the body as fragment. The difference, though, was in scale and confidence.
