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133

Collections —Man / Prêt-à-Porter

Fall / Winter — 2001

Press Release

“Uniforms are the sportswear of the 20th century.”

Diana Vreeland

“We also look very good in our uniform and this separates us from those unfortunate people who go around in their own clothes.”

Robert Walser, “Jacob von Gunten”

“I’ve always liked men in uniform and you look wonderful in yours.”

Mae West

“Rappel à l’ordre: a deep, instinctive need for order, discipline. For creating a personal uniform. With the reference to and memory of military dress exerting a strong appeal. At once basic and exclusive, severe and sumptuous, by vocation expressing power and vigor (physical too). Imperial uniforms, formal uniforms: Frederick the Great and the Red Army, Stalin and Queen Victoria’s Dragoons. This urge for tradition led me to construct the jacket with utmost precision in sporty mode. And so it features sharp cuts, new slanting tucks at shoulders and neck. All for a distinct streamline effect. A flawless touch which I sought to mediate underlining how men approach dressing today, always in a clearly individual way (nothing programmed, nothing pre-established). Then offsetting the sense of severity with certain “rebellious” pairings, as in the tuxedo worn with shiny camouflage-print fur-lined parka.

To emphasize the virility and seriousness of the clothes, I singled out a fine range of high-quality fabrics and mannish colors. Dense, classic mixes of forest greens, gray, dark blue. But also potent autumn hues with hints of orange. And then light mellow camels. The black, burgundy and navy of evening coats, long and short, heightened by shirts in pure white or some tone-on-tone nuance. Superlative materials also for the more casual items: cover teaseled on the inside, pressed alpacas, cashmere flannel. Even wild astrakan for wrap-around coats.

In the strict tailoring I found reasons and resources giving an extraordinary meaning to style. As in the items with warm fur linings, period minks sheared in an usual way for a special mannish impact. As in the little stone-colored cover coat – vaguely gendarme, vaguely dandy – neatly stylized, perfectly free of all superfluity. As in the slim line cadet tailcoat with thick decorative stitching.

I concentrated my creative imagination, passion for alchemy, love of spellbinding travel in a rich, magnificent definition of details. Shuffling latitudes, subverting climates, inventing a “virtual” magical arctic fauna. For the pilot bomber, bleached Australian opossum reminiscent of Ontario fox; white and gray anaconda pieced together and scratched into ice and stone hues; ostrich feet assembled in patchworks evoking the scales of fish as they wriggle through the cold waters of the Barents Sea; alligator sanded and brushed into a supreme softness. Lastly, for an exquisite note of snobbery, the tie becomes as white as the shirt; shoes bond velvet and rubber, belts velvet and leather…”

Gianfranco Ferré