Des_Phemmes Fall Winter 2023 – 2024 collection at Milan Fashion Week

“A face-to-face conversation between today’s me and the me who gave life to the Des_Phemmes project three years ago, a comparison between what I wanted to express and what I am able to express today with my garments”.

Temporal epicenter of Salvo Rizza’s stylistic research, for him now a timeless place and home, remain the 90s and the female figures who populated the fashion system of that decade, women whose strong and evocative images feed the imaginary from collection to collection aesthetic of Des_Phemmes: Stella Tennant, Amber Valletta, Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell. Their subversive and “different” beauty immediately captured the attention of the stylist and increased the curiosity to know more and more expressions of themselves, prompting him to discover a sample of photographic images unknown to him. He then isolated and fixed the recurring images in his mind, those that have become “obsessive” for him, drawing on them slowly, making them the way in the realization of his work and making them the spark of the creative fire of this new collection .

The historic 90s campaigns of CK and Helmut Lang, the photographic imagery of Corinne Day and Juergen Teller, become elements of continuous reference and creative reference, an immersion in his obsessions, elements to merge inextricably with his current vision of fashion . The white boxers displayed under the dark blue denims have a strong reference to the photographic campaigns of CK with Kate Moss and Mark Wahlberg, the reference to a moment in fashion in which intimate and private garments, such as the white ribbed cotton tank top, it became a fashion object to be exhibited, up to being an aesthetic emblem of the 90s, a male and female fetish, and which in Des_Phemmes, who wants to dig to the root of this change, rediscovers precisely this value, its original shape and cut , but is taken to the extreme and made part of the brand’s imagination by dressing in precious hand-embroidered tulle.

The same look is further exaggerated in its meaning when the wardrobe pieces are untied by the wearer’s gender, and the iconic dark blue denim with white boxer shorts are worn by the model not bare-chested as Mark Wahlberg did in the CK campaigns, but with a nude tulle blouse, transparent and feminine in construction, thus creating a different nudity, whose embroideries seem to fly over the body. What attracts attention is the synapse of memory even before the garment itself.

Each piece of Des_Phemmes Fall Winter 2023 – 2024 collection is interpreted as an object full of meaning, not for the shape or appearance that is socially attributed to it, but for the relationship it creates with the body that wears it, be it male or female. The contrast between a very “feminine” garment and the male body makes the Des_Phemmes image contemporary, the keystone is not the simple liberation from the attribution of a garment to a gender, but the possibility of choosing it, wearing it, giving a very personal interpretation to the garment same.

If in the previous collections the Des_Phemmes garments came out as if from the wardrobe of friends and loved ones, in this one they are instead born from the broader concept of memory, from garments that recall the 90s and that historical, musical, figurative period, it is a spasmodic journey into all that has influenced in the past and still influences the work of the stylist. The tartan is immersed in a sea of crystals and iconic garments from the 90s re-emerge as if soaked in them, such as the oversized check flannel shirt, grunge inspired, covered in crystals worn with a men’s wool microkilt, in a continuous dialogue between images and concepts typical of the 90s but re-proposed in a contemporary key, enriched with embroidery or with an evolution of the “classic” shapes reworked in different materials, postponing and revisiting the original garment at the same time.

Black eco-leather, the “severe” protagonist of 90s minimalism, meets the fluid and sensual silhouettes of a sleep dress or a longuette skirt with a deep slit, delegating the task of recalibrating the feminine appeal to bright Swarovski geometries and embroidered edges . In this part of the collection, the reference is to a very strong and decisive sexuality, from the cult of the body to drawing on fetishism, the discovery of a darker side with a deeper meaning, until, however, clouds of jais and iridescent crystals take away the sexual value to leather garments, standing out all over on men’s coats, cargo pants and bustier dresses.

The wardrobe is stained with acidic nuances and oxidized colors giving life to an eclectic total look but with a radical attitude, in which layering games and oxymoronic combinations tell a proud but sensitive personality, who does not give up the pleasure of a stratified, intellectual approach, while not feeling the need to deprive himself of a sometimes even ironic and irreverent sensuality in the game between male and female.

Thus, in Des_Phemmes Fall Winter 2023 – 2024 collection, the mix of languages is reconfirmed that combines the couture fragility of embroidered nude tulle with vibrant garments in colorful feathers and jais, with the proportioned elegance of men’s tailoring up to tartan outerwear in warm colors, for the creation and consolidation of a now defined, recognizable, innovative style.

OASIS Fal Winter 2023 – 2024 DES PHEMMES PROJECT

The presentation project of the Des_Phemmes Fall Winter 2023 – 2024 collection finds its roots in the concept of Oasis as a place of beauty and refuge. In the cold and inexpressive urban context, Des_Phemmes creates a surreal and astonishing landscape, in which the new collection comes to life, being born like a flower among dunes of sequins.

The Des_Phemmes oasis comes to terms with the city context, with work and productivity, and from this point of view it tries to convert beauty into a product, without wasting any material. The approximately 900kg of recycled plastic sequin dunes used are the quantity necessary for the creation of an entire collection, and together with 250m of fabric curtains with applications, they are used in an installation which, in affirming beauty, intends to underline the massive work and the manufacturing necessary to obtain it and that is behind the work of the stylist. The same materials used in the presentation will in fact be used later in the production of the collection items, while other elements of the set-up will be reused as furniture in the brand’s sales corners, in an Upcycling process that puts the material at the center of attention, starting from respect of the latter as an inexhaustible source of beauty.