Something heavy hangs over everything: the weight of many lives upon just one. Stories, both fictional and real, accumulate and mingle together. Lost in the past, amidst Etruscan ruins and Renaissance frescos, you uncover a way of dressing which is formed by pure gestures.
An extension of fabric, thrown over the shoulder, makes a garment appear out of nothing but instinct. Solid shapes, cut from cloth, are draped so that their solidity gives way to something more fluid. Somewhere between sophistication and naivety is your ideal way of carrying yourself. When it becomes part of you, like a second skin, there will be no need for other adornments.
Niccolò Pasqualetti
Photos: Cécile Bortoletti
Impressions and belongings, collected in memories and in once empty rooms: countless things waiting in the dark to be remembered and cherished again. Riffling through the wardrobe, stuffed with old clothes, the textures you encounter sweep you away from the present. The tweed of a jacket slightly damp from the rain, denim from pairs of jeans in all different washes, scraps from a faux fur coat, a classic tweed blazer starting to fray. When you find your father’s corduroy jacket, you imagine what it would look like if it were a dress. How would it move, how would it appear from afar, would it still remind you of him? Robust enough to be worn over and over again, the wide ribs of cord are yet so soft that they change with the slightest touch. You caress it back and forth to see what imprints it leaves.
Things that before were indestructible, immovable, will begin to yield, becoming malleable. Sheets of rigid metal will collapse into themselves like so many crumpled sheets of paper. Worn sparsely as jewellery – a brooch to secure a scarf, a pair of earrings, a cuff over the sleeve – or even as clothing, the shiny warped surface reflects and distorts its surroundings. In the distorted reflection, you see wooden pearls assembled into a kind of armour, and leather which looks like crocodile skin forming a kind of pannier. These things, which once seemed so heavy, will only become lighter and lighter with time.
Styling Samuel Drira
Photography Cécile Bortoletti
Art direction Sybille Walter
Hair Mayu Morimoto
Makeup Asami Kawai
Casting Chouaïb Arif
Assistance Eva Rapti
Text Rhys Evans
Special thanks 0fr. and École Duperré Paris
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With love,
FWO
