Images courtesy of Giacomo Cabrini

Marco Rambaldi is nervous. He is jittering with emotion. We’re sitting backstage moments before the debut of his latest Spring Summer 2020 collection and we’re sipping on champagne, a bubbly remedy which seems to calm his nerves down. 

Marco Rambaldi is nervous just like the women who inspired his latest collection, women on the verge of a nervous breakdown. 

He explains: “We took a different approach to this collection in respect to the others. Whilst before we would always start by looking at a specific time period or a person who would inspire us, this collection was born out of a more abstract idea, a social consideration of the society around us.”

This isn’t the first time that the Bolognese but Milan based designer has made a reflection which veers on the political throughout his clothing. His past collections include references to Italy’s emergence of feminism in the 70s and the socialist student revolts of the late sixties. 

However, this collection, titled ‘Lapse’, is a reflection on the now. It’s a reflection on the broken nature of today’s society and how it is already affecting us currently. 

The IUAV graduate and winner of Camera Della Moda’s Next Generation competition wanted for this theme of broken beauty to be extremely visible throughout the collection, like holes, gatherings are left unmended; whilst straps at a certain point stop and turn into pieces of rope. Knits feature a series of jumping points, designed specifically to create floating threads as if the mesh were broken; the sole of the shoes is designed in a way which doesn’t follow exactly the upper of the shoe, so it seems like it is composed of different pieces of separate shoes. The stitching on the suits is wrong, even though it is evidently handmade as if following the silhouette of another garment. The same thing can be seen in the patterns: flowers from different bouquets are grouped together, whilst pieces of destroyed neo-classical statues float around as if left behind. 

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This season is also the first season Rambaldi, who auto-produces his collections, has ventured into accessory, shoe design and production. Yet, the designer doesn’t have plans on expanding his menswear offering yet.

“Not at the moment, but definitely in the future, for now, I want to focus on letting my womenswear collection grow slowly,” he says. 

And the importance of slow production is something which has been stressed quite a lot lately, and of which Rambaldi is very aware of. Being Italian and very proud of his roots (although not of his government – who can blame him!) he is trying to grow his brand slowly until he finds the right distributor who will support his way of thinking and working. 

“I believe young brands like mine can stand out over brands who focus on marketing only if they manage to follow the slow production path, focusing on the importance of Made in Italy and the crafts which are slowly dying because of mass production,” he states. 

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Indeed and unfortunately, the death of original craftsmanship is upon us. 

Yet Rambaldi has hope for the future: “I believe that if we’ll manage to teach the importance of going back to the roots to the younger generations, then they’ll understand that they won’t have to follow trends in order to build a successful brand. They must understand that it is crucial they work with what is available to them, developing new ways to work with most often are scraps of materials.”

Well, if these are part of his plans for the future, we can’t wait to see what this young designer has in store for us next. 

Tags: Fashion, marco rambaldi, MFW, milano fashion week, sustainability