Talented young designers shaking up Italy's fashion establishment

Nov 19, 2009, 10:27 GMT

Milan - Will Gabriele Colangelo be the next Giorgio Armani? Will Francesco Scognamiglio? Or could the new masters of Italian fashion be the tandem Tommaso Aquilano and Roberto Rimondi?

Several very gifted designers are shaking up Italy's fashion establishment. Critics are jubilant -- it is high time, they say. Their laments had become ever louder of late as the storied fashion nation's creative elite creeps deeper into old age: Armani is 75, Roberto Cavalli 68, Laura Biagiotti 66.

The designers to whom Milan owes its rise as a fashion capital are either getting on or -- like Gianni Versace and Gianfranco Ferre -- gone. The last ones to achieve world renown were Dolce & Gabbana, who made their debut in 1985.

Colangelo was just 11-years-old then. Today, after just three shows at the Milan Fashion Week, the scion of a family of furriers can count himself among Italy's most promising newcomers. He has a flair for precise details and command of the interplay of materials.

'I like clear forms and colours, and a soft fall of fabrics. Everything that's aggressive and loud I reject,' Colangelo said. Just 34-years-old, he can already look back on 12 years in the fashion industry, having worked for a number of noted labels before he struck out on his own last year.

Colangelo's explanation for Italian fashion's generational problem is plausible: 'As a young creative professional, you need powerful partners who have long-term faith in you,' he said. 'It comes down to support for production and distribution. That's all very hard to find nowadays.'

Such support is what made the rise of Armani, Versace and others possible. The Italian textile industry, which had become extremely wealthy, invested heavily in young designers in the 1970s and '80s. Today, though, it has to concentrate primarily on holding off Asian competition, which keeps getting stronger.

In an effort to halt depletion of their creative assets, Italy's fashion institutions have come up with various initiatives. One is the 'Who Is On Next?' competition, targeted at scouting new talents in the pret-a-porter and accessories sectors. Colangelo won it in 2008, Aquilano and Rimondi in 2005.

The careers of Aquilano and Rimondi took off rather like a rocket after they won. It did not take long before their clothing line, called '6267' at first but since renamed 'Aquilano.Rimondi,' was hanging in the world's best stores.

Last year, the two designers' extraordinary art of tailoring and eye for harmonious proportions brought them a lucrative job on the side: Aquilano and Rimondi design the collections for the fashion house Gianfranco Ferre.

Despite their success, they have stayed down to earth. 'We want to grow step by step and work hard on the product. After all, if you don't sell anything, the media quickly drop you, too,' said Rimondi, aware of how fleeting sudden fame can be.

This pragmatism may be what distinguishes the latest talents from previous ones. It cannot be said, of course, that Italian fashion has stood still since Dolce & Gabbana. But Stefano Guerriero, Alexsandro Palombo, Maurizio Pecoraro and all the others have remained at a level below the potential ascribed to them or have quickly disappeared from the runways after sensational debuts.

Simply staging one's own fashion show in Milan costs between 200,000 and 1.5 million euros (300,783 and 2.3 million dollars), depending on how elaborate it is.

Many capable Italian designers therefore prefer to sign on with large fashion houses -- gladly in Paris, Milan's chief competitor for bragging rights as the world's fashion capital. Stefano Pilati, for example, designs collections for Yves Saint Laurent, and Riccardo Tisci calls the shots at Givenchy.

It may warm Italy's national ego when Italian designers cause a stir in Paris, but it hardly helps Milan as a fashion location.

What is helping, though, is Italian fashion's new guard, which also includes designers such as Albino d'Amato and Francesco Scognamiglio, a native of Pompeii whose creations are glamorous, imaginative and sometimes daring.

The common denominator of all these up-and-comers is a return to traditional Italian strengths like excellent fabrics and high-quality craftsmanship. The road leading to a glorious fashion future, it seems, first swings through the glorious past.