Stefano Gallici’s Ann Demeulemeester Challenge

PARIS — “All people has their concept of what Ann Demeulemeester stands for as a model,” says Stefano Gallici, whose sophomore assortment for the home that Ann constructed shall be revealed Saturday evening at Espace des Blancs Manteaux. “It’s normally a slim false impression anchored to a view that wipes away the inevitable and charming complexities of Ann’s imaginative and prescient. There may be extra to this home than the stompy boots, the dangling straps and even the slouchy tailoring, or the black, regardless that they’re nonetheless right here.”

“I’m attempting to supply my unfiltered viewpoint,” he provides.

With a directness that reads as assured quite than smug, Gallici — a lanky beau with the curly mane of a faun, the thin body of a rocker and the melancholic gaze of a poet — will get proper on the downside that haunts homes like Demeulemeester — and Helmut Lang, for that matter — who all of the sudden lose their founder mid-career: the danger of turning what was a imaginative and prescient right into a set of soulless, business codes.

After Ann left her namesake model in 2013, its id drifted right here and there as its fortunes waned. In 2020, Italian retail guru Claudio Antonioli got here to the rescue, buying the model by means of his Milan-based Dreamers Manufacturing unit incubator. For a number of seasons, he launched collections designed by a studio group that had been heavy on slouchy tailoring. Then got here the short-lived tenure of Ludovic de Saint Sernin, who, regardless of bringing new vitality to the turnaround efforts with a punchier look, exited the brand last May after a single season amid disagreement with administration.

Within the spring of 2023, Antonioli made the daring transfer of selling Gallici, who was already a part of the studio group and educated on the Università Iuav di Venezia, Italy’s most progressive vogue college, to the position of inventive director. “Stefano, regardless of being younger, was a straightforward selection for me: for the work ethic, for the eagerness he nurtures for the model and, not least, for his real curiosity within the challenge as an exploration of favor, not as an train in self promotion,” Antonioli explains.

Gallici has a stronger connection to Ann’s legacy than his predecessor, however he’s adamant that he’s not attempting to be a copycat, replicating the archive advert nauseam. His gaze is drawn in direction of particular moments from the model’s previous during which sharpness, even sexiness, got here to the fore; the barbaric, wild tones that emerged in sure collections. There may be additionally a subterranean vibe to what Gallici does that’s fully his personal: rooted in music the best way Ann’s work was rooted in poetry.

At Christmas, Gallici despatched out vinyl LPs with the soundtrack to his first present. For tomorrow’s presentation he’s collaborating with composer and sound experimenter Neuf Voix, who will carry out reside. “Sound is an integral a part of my imaginative and prescient, and the entire mindscape I intention at constructing for Ann,” he says.

The brand new assortment explores fragility and power with a type of pagan rawness and a renewed color palette that features deep reds and pale flesh tones. The road up options greatcoats impressed by Joseph Beuys’, uncooked edged leather-based aprons and lengthy pleated skirts, with tufty sheepskin and shaggy knit collars including a wild contact. There are additionally some negligé and lingerie-like slip attire which, combined with tougher items, look sudden and contemporary.

“I see the archive as a forest during which to enter and get misplaced, selecting issues up as I’m going alongside,” muses Gallici. “It’s a journey of discovery as a lot as it’s one in every of self discovery.”