area 127+ | colour in design

Katia Carlucci: Are you a painter, an architect or a stylist?
Michele Chiocciolini: Painting introduces you to your soul, shows you fragments of intimate architecture; architecture is the shape of life, and fashion design is its first structure. I have always drawn a lot, ever since I was a child. My parents used to have to buy me new crayons every day. Drawing was an easier form of writing for me, more immediate and more personal. I feel the same way about it today: not everything I paint is legible to all eyes: it is like music, the words to a song by “The Clash”,
a bouquet of flowers; the sounds, colors and fragrances make it a very personal context. A painting is an outline of feelings and moods, it is the awareness of an overflow of sensations, with a joy and, sometimes, a frustration that the viewer cannot see. Architecture is not merely a container, a hollow volume, a monolith with openings such as doors or windows. We have come a long way from the mannerist concept of it. An empty space, uncontaminated and apparently sterile, is often the product of a well-thought-out “design”, of meticulous engineering or of an idea to be defended at all costs. I think that in this period of history, the words of Achille Castiglioni, my mentor and that of many other architects, are particularly apt: “(...) Everything has still to be invented, even now (...).” That is certainly as true now as it was when he said it, only more difficult to believe and grasp, though I am sure that we can still produce good architecture, like that of MVRDV, for example. Fashion design is very closely related to the design (by that I mean the project) of the object or the architecture.
I was lucky enough to meet the great master, Gaetano Pesce, who defined my work as a fashion designer as another form of architecture. So I would say that painting is a part of me, fashion design is my passion and informed choice, and architecture is my training.
K.C.: “Arte Indossata” is the name of your 2011 summer collection, in which your clothing designs represent your works of art.
M.C.: My first collection: “Arte Indossata”, gets its name from paintings I did between 2010 and 2011, after two stays in NYC. The contamination I received from this city and its spirit greatly influenced my works, especially from the standpoint of color. As soon as I arrived in the “City”, my first impression was to think of how it is so often pictured in black and white.
Can such a purely metropolitan area have any other color key than black and white? The paintings by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, the nocturnal scenes illuminated by thousands of lights, the sunsets that cast a rosy tint on the gray concrete and metal skyscrapers and turn the 18th century brownstones a glowing red impressed my notebook and, later, my canvases when I returned to Florence.
From those canvases I developed prints on silk that I then used for my collection: lightweight dresses ablaze with the palettes of underground graffiti. The technique of digital printing on silk makes it possible to transfer paintings photographically, giving the fabric the same texture and depth as the canvas. In this way, watercolors on cotton, inks, acrylics, oils and mixed techniques, or works produced with plaster, canvas and newspaper became printed silks and later dresses, and I held my first fashion show.
K.C.: How important is color in your collections? What is “your” color? Is the choice of the colors in your collection only an esthetic factor or does it resonate emotionally?
M.C.: Color is part of a mood, a creative impulse. When you draw you create a story and, as far as I am concerned, a collection is linked in space and time to a reference period, a place. I think of the people who lived in this “time/space”, of the fact that sometimes they were subject to it, at times they interacted with it, other times they dominated it, and all this is transmitted with the shapes, the design of the clothing and above all the color. A bright, vivid color like scarlet can represent energy and the desire to live, while at the same time expressing intense drama: it all depends on the story you want to tell, on what, at that exact time of your life your creations want to say and what sort of reactions they intend to cause. For this reason, the choice of the colors in a collection is “necessary”, that is the only way it could be. I couldn’t say what color is “mine”, a lot of colors represent me, especially those irrevocably linked to memories: a peach-pink dress of my mother’s, the smoky gray of my grandmother’s mountain kitchen, the sere yellow of the grass burnt dry in the summer, the vibrant gold of a friend’s Smart, the blue of my sister's eyes in which my entire life is reflected, the cerulean sky over Castagno d’Andrea, the silvery sheen on the Arno, the warm depth of my father’s voice that has recently become mixed up with that of my brother. These are “my” colors: the colors of memory, colors that belong to me as they do to many, that describe situations, places and seasons cyclically, that dress you like that cardigan you always put on when you reach home in the evening.
K.C.: How to you combine fabrics, colors and materials? Are there certain colors that work well on a particular fabric and not on others? For example, I imagine colors like yellow and pink on silk or linen, and browns and blacks on wool or serge.
M.C.: You don’t choose the color, it chooses you. You think of a story, you write it, you break it down into a lot of pieces of paper creating a collage of emotions and glimpses of life, because in the end what makes a dress is a bouclé of infinite threads woven indissolubly together.
It is just this infinitesimal weave, the fabric, that dresses, warms and cools you. Color, on the other hand, is a wonder, it is the medium, the instinct, the immediate perception of you, of what you want to communicate, but it is not linked in any particular way to the fabric; a purely summery color like the pastel yellows and blues of my next womenswear collection can be wintry if we use them, for example, on smooth velvet that changes in the light. This is because there is not only the choice of the color but the handling of it, combining it with other shades, contaminating it with the light and the environment.
K.C.: Coco Chanel used to say: “The most beautiful color in the world is the one that looks good on you”. Do you agree with this or do you think there is a color that suits everyone?
M.C.: As I was saying before, I don’t thing there can be a color that suits everyone or that looks bad on everyone, just like I don’t think there is a dress that can look good or awful on everyone. At times people say that some of my clothes are only right for certain people but I really think we have to make a distinction here: when you choose a color for a collection, obviously you choose it because you are thinking of it for a certain dress and maybe for an ideal reference figure (theoretically, you should also think of a market survey, but in the early stages of design let’s just say that that all you think about is the story). But then the most satisfying part is knowing that someone wanted to wear your dress because they found the right language in it, someone unlike your initial ideal wearer wore your dress beautifully, because she made it hers. As Coco said, there is no suitable or unsuitable color or dress, it simply has to communicate a clear message to you, like music. This is what makes the difference between a well-dressed person and an elegant one, what the French call savoir faire.
K.C.: I remember a scene in the movie “The Devil Wears Prada” in which Miranda Priestley criticizes the choice of the color “blue” for the pullover worn by her poor assistant, saying: “what you don’t realize is that the sweater is not simply blue, not turquoise, not lapis lazuli: it is actually cerulean...”. What is behind the choice of a color or a fabric? How important is it not to trivialize this choice?
M.C.: Behind the color and its choice there is a strong project identity, meaning that when you are designing it and thinking of a collection, nothing is left to chance, though it may not seem so. At that exact moment you are thinking that this pantone or that pencil will be your next color, and for various, unquestionable reasons your choice is focused on it and it alone. Without meaning to, you read a book, or saw a movie, or went to a concert that prompted you to experiment in the use of that color for a dress, or to think it was very close to being essential in the wardrobe of every one of us.
My dress, in just that color, will be an intuition that others will grasp, not just me, and that is where the fashion cycle starts: to see that what you’re doing is being done, in a different key, by others (colleagues) with their own identity and the same perception. So color and fabric are the lymph of my collections and correspond to the two senses that are fundamental for fashion: sight and touch.
K.C.: I know that you are particularly fond of Italian design. Your atelier has some important pieces by Italian designers, like a Superonda sofa by Archizoom in fire engine red. What is the relationship between fashion and design?
M.C.: Fashion is closely connected to design, indeed, in English, what you refer to as a “stylist” is typically called a “fashion designer”. As for me, my training came after my high school education in classic studies, when I majored in architecture at the university. My passion for design goes back a long way before that, however. Objects have always communicated sensations to me, shapes intrigue me and the strong tactile impression of certain objects thrills me.
The attraction, in my case, is more to the shape and material rather than to the technology. I’m very instinctive and at times I approach an object as you might approach the curls in a Bernini sculpture. This has happened for a great many pieces of furniture I have collected over the years, the most recent being the Superonda sofa by Archizoom, an object with an incredible allure.
K.C.: Your “capsule collection” is a collection of design handbags, featuring strong lines, fine materials and vivid colors like yellow and fuchsia. What made you decide to produce design accessories for fashion?
M.C.: The accessory is something that, in my opinion, cannot be taken separately in a concept of total look, it is something that characterizes a person decisively.

The bag in the “capsule collection”, designed and presented for the Vogue Fashion Night in Florence, is a clutch in three versions, a rectangular shape that appears rigid and structured but actually conceals my strong bond with the skilled leather craftsmen of Florence. A Florentine must always know how to work with leather, what is behind a finished product. The world of leather goods has always fascinated me to the extent of spending some time every summer in a small workshop, following the production of the first prototypes. I selected the leather, created the paper pattern, cut and carefully followed the assembly every step of the way. My success, on top of my own enthusiasm, encouraged me to go on and so I decided not to leave this sector and to design it parallel to the apparel. The graphic designs and colors with their strong “pop” echoes tell the story of my world, the desire to schematize and describe objects and animals, recognizable to a child’s eyes, with a few lines, a little like what happened for the star, or the dog, that has become a sort of logo of mine.
K.C.: Have you made a statistical breakdown of the preferences of your customers on the basis of colors and fabrics?
M.C.: I’m still a young designer and it’s hard for me to see how I could be more oriented toward one type of clientele rather than another, especially if we’re talking about different countries, because for the time being my production is linked to a small local artisanal tradition and only the accessories are sold online.
What I have noticed, however, selling in Italy, is how there is a sharp difference between purchases made by local people and others made by tourists and people who travel for business, without forgetting that the media and social network ensure that pictures of your products arrive quickly and easily from one end of the world to another, creating continuous contaminations of taste and trends.

 

Michele Chiocciolini, is a florentine architect and a young fashion designer.
The brand “Michele Chiocciolini” is made from the couple Michele Chiocciolini (designer) and Francesca Chiocciolini, his sister, that represents the key figure for the the management and organization of the brand development.
In 2011 they presented their first collection, “Arte Indossata”. In September 2012, during the VFNO, Michele and Francesca inaugurate their atelier, placed in Via del Fico 3/r, in the heart of Santa Croce.