A guy can cover the denim market for years and still have trouble getting his head around “left-hand denim,” which has something to do with warps and wefts and the direction of the twill.
Gabriele Colangelo has no such mental blocks. Son of a furrier, he believes fashion starts with the fabrics, which he develops up to six months ahead of time with elite Italian mills. For spring, he cut silk cady and Prince of Wales woolens into wide strips and wove them into fabrics of his own, leaving streamers dangling here and there on simple tops, tank dresses and even a napa leather coat.
There were also far more labor-intensive feats of fabric engineering, including sheepskin shaved into a dégradé from smooth to curly, which then segued into fringes of shaggy threads.
While original and innovative, such fabric fireworks can fizzle if the clothes aren’t graceful. Colangelo’s most fetching exits were simple slipdresses, one made of a guipurelike dégradé of embroideries and another stunner in a white duchesse silk into which a flower pattern had been etched using a devoré shredding treatment that left the swags of loose thread trapped between organza. Talk about elegant decay.