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133

Collections —Woman / Prêt-à-Porter

Spring / Summer — 1999

Press Release

“Going over the images of my twenty years in fashion, I thought at length about the nature of ready-to-wear. About what it entails: quality, elegance, design in all possible expressions. This is why – guided by the “architectural” vision of my work that has helped me give shape to my creative imagination, sculpt the material in an unusual way, find new formulas open to individual interpretation and enjoyment, offer fresh instances of the aura of couture – I chose to dedicate this collection to the concept of “modernly exceptional.” Where various clothes fulfill a demand for beauty and luxury.

While I feel a vital need for structure, I also experience a compulsion for fantasy and emotion. To translate, necessarily, into an impulse of ultrafemininity and joy. The joy of sparking pleasure, of exuding allure. It’s an alchemy arising from a mixture of feelings and techniques. Using fabrics and materials with great subtlety. Creating evident, transparent systems of construction. Exploiting the air around through gentle movement. Imagining cones in a quest for new volumes. Ranging beyond the limits and weights of materials through the geometry of design… Yet all in a natural atmosphere of skin-tanning-and-smoothing sun, of calm and warmth. Of magical colors like coral, fuchsia, pink. Of unusual substances reminiscent of arbors and trellises. Like raffia, a delicate scratch…”

Gianfranco Ferré

Lightness and transparency. Loose jackets in a gazar at once sheer and taut thanks to full-texture paths of stiching. Raincoats in ambertone india-rubber and rubberized gazar. Shirts and slacks in a weightless washed taffeta. Quasi-biker blousons in a fine supple leather, no lining. Alligator cut up and put scale by scale on a stretch tulle T-shirt, or firmly all in one piece for a cone-shaped miniskirt low slung on hips. A realm beyond shape. Urge for freedom from definite criteria, ergo geometric cuts of cloth for easy-drape shirts and sections of circles for skirts pinned at waist or hip. Simple rectangles of material with drawstrings, joints, overlappings. Organza with piano wire for a surface in movement. Knits in the form of body-draping bands of pleats, but strawlike. A new idea in jackets with striking stand-up collars creating new necklines in back; plus the sweet caress of a balloon effect rather than the usual rigidity. Dresses and tops free of shoulders & co. In favor of a strapless look.

Unforeseen alchemies. Black lacquered metal for fully studded surfaces, for magical galuchas, for ribbons sewn to form holes and slits revealing flashes of skin. Sartorial-technique bastings, marks and bands for the latest in patterns and embroideries. Also on a gray denim with contrast stitched ribbing. Fanciful clouds of new torn taffeta. There-but-not-there shoes with stretch fleshtone uppers and with a whimsical dusting of dull gold on heels. The surprise of a dull metal bag, almost a jewel…