From the depths of his Italian Vogue archives, Alessandro Dell’Acqua unearthed an editorial by which Steven Meisel photographed the late Stella Tennant, her aristocratic cool poised towards the Devonshire countryside. It triggered a kind of well-bred collision in his creativeness: haute nation restraint operating headlong into the insouciance of French bourgeois-bohemian stylish (one among his obsessions). All of it added as much as a pre-fall assortment written in a kind of stylistic shorthand, the place eccentric ease blended with a splash of polish.
Dell’Acqua has little persistence for summary concepts of class. His model comes as a tightly edited conflict of naughty bourgeois, sporty grunge, and matted glamour, all run by way of a styling percolator that’s unmistakably his personal—he famously skips the stylist altogether. This season’s delightfully eccentric mêlée was rooted in covetable on a regular basis staples, tuned to the temper of the second, but he’s “pointedly bored with chasing no matter pattern occurs to be having its flip.” The lookbook was shot in a lavish Milanese dwelling, all gilded mirrors and stucco ceilings; nevertheless, the gathering felt irreverently relaxed framed in such grandeur.
T-shirt mini attire arrived absolutely tartan-sequinned; and Argyle knits sparred with pleated dévoré georgette skirts dusted in gold thread. Tailoring, by turns, got here cropped in Prince of Wales checks or indulgent and luxurious in gold lamé brocade. Mongolian wool coats, padded parkas, and Loden-cut overcoats swaddled in outsized scarves performed towards chunky chiné knits completed with lengthy fringes “as in the event that they had been feathers.”
Within the males’s line, brocade reappeared on cargo trousers, paired with a checked turtleneck zipped up the again. Leather-based jackets, neoprene-lined sweatshirts, voluminous cable knits, and neatly tailor-made Prince of Wales coats piled on the laid-back swagger.
Dell’Acqua is a maestro of instinctive, idiosyncratic styling that appears unnervingly nonchalant but exquisitely put collectively. How does he do it? He simply smiled his Cheshire-cat smile.
