A few designers this season talked about setting aside their creative egos and letting customers’ personalities speak. Take the creative collective Vitelli, now in its second season. They have been carving out a focused lexicon, based on shared, community-driven creations, recycled and upcycled fabrics, material manipulation and, most importantly, artisanship, their fashion always a celebration of what’s possible with craft.
Compared to their debut collection, the fall lineup was less experimental: similarly layered, textured and crafty but easier to decipher, and filled with identifiable silhouettes. As craftsmen and women, the Vitelli collective delivered on interesting textiles: knit yarns were woven into a fabric with an entangled surface that looked like a spaghetti dish. It was worked into bomber jackets worn with sinuous rib knit frocks and balloon boleros with A-line skirts.
Floral and other patterned textiles were felted, their rich nuances peeking from the wrinkled and holed woolen coating and turned into waist-fitted blazers and gentle overcoats for her and cropped jackets for him. Knits replaced most of the pants, underpinnings and coats, except for a few puffers filled with waste selvage.
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The collective cited the Liberty movement, Italy’s equivalent of Art Nouveau, and its socially charged design perspective as an inspiration. Vitelli’s proposition of reclaiming the value of handicraft as the only way forward for fashion was radical, and beautifully so.