It’s been a busy season for Alessandro Dell’Acqua: In addition to presenting his collection for No. 21 in Milan, he unveiled a collaboration with Tod’s during Paris Fashion Week. “I’m a little tired,” he conceded backstage before his show for Rochas, held in the sunlit foyer of the Théâtre National de Chaillot opposite the Eiffel Tower.
To say that he kept it simple this season would be to do him a disservice. There was nothing simple about the couture-quality fabrics he deployed, which ranged from rippling silk duchesse to lustrous velvet, painstakingly stitched with thousands of ostrich feathers.
Dell’Acqua got them from French suppliers who worked for big Paris houses like Givenchy and Yves Saint Laurent in the Seventies. “For the warped leopard print, we did some tests and we managed to make it with taffeta, using looms that had been left a little idle,” he explained.
Rather, he let the fabrics do the talking. Instead of trying to emulate those legendary designers with retro couture silhouettes, dell’Acqua went for loose, boxy cuts, whether on a crinkled, taffeta buttonless coat in a mouthwatering shade of peach, or on a double-breasted pant suit in his signature powder pink.
The designer added a dash of drama
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