The origins of Berluti’s new collection lie in a journey taken by creative director Alessandro Sartori to the desert landscape of Marfa, Texas, with its sun-bleached sands, scrubby wild grasses, burned asphalt roads and dust-covered detritus. The nearby Chinati Foundation, and particularly the sharp-edged artworks in copper by its founder Donald Judd, also inspired the collection’s hardware.
Joining Berluti’s creative director Alessandro Sartori to work on the collection this season is the Brooklyn-based artist, Scott Campbell. Known for the strong graphic lines of his tattoo art, he has created designs that are etched and sewn onto the leather surfaces of bags and shoes, simple, rune-like scratches and stitches that radiate into helixes and snake into swirls. Campbell’s geometric motifs also appear in embroidery, laser prints and jacquards, and are featured on the invitation to this show.
The casting this season is more youthful and features models who have been chosen for their distinctive personal style.
The shapes feature informal proportions and a balanced silhouette of soft and sharp; light, but with volume. The tops are boxy whatever the style or length, whether coats, bombers or tailored jackets, which are cut with a natural shoulder. Trousers are carrot fit, made for the most part in mohair fabric, cuffed and cut short on the leg to reveal the ankle, and also come in one hundred per cent wool jersey. A kimono sleeve, cut in a single piece with the body, features on simple lapel-free coats, on jackets and on sweatshirts.
Colours are sampled from the landscape of the desert: scorpion black; prickly-pear and stone shades of red; salt-lake white; asphalt grey; rust orange; buffalo brown; cactus-flower violet; gasoline blue; and desert-grass and tree-bark shades of green.
From the zips on the bags to the buckles on the belts, this season all metallic hardware is in polished copper, its high shine contrasting the densely pigmented matt finishes of the rest of the collection.
Sweaters are in cashmere, variously using hand-designed intarsia constructions; in jacquard with a three-dimensional texture reminiscent of tyre tread; or ribbed with the cashmere air-brushed for ultimate softness.
Cashmere alapaca coats are constructed in a jacquard intarsia to create both vertical and horizontal stripes. Some of the coats take the intarsia technique to innovative new levels: rectangular strips of the material surface of the coat are removed and replaced with panels of leather, bonded to a flannel backing to create a striped effect according to patterns designed by Scott Campbell. The result is a mosaic-like tessellated effect.
A double-collared construction is also introduced this season, whereby coats and overcoats are cut with two fronts joined by a single sleeve, allowing for a variety of fastening styles to regulate the warmth of the wearer.
Leather pieces include quilted trousers and a trench coat made in shirt-weight calfskin.
Luggage includes a four-zip quatre jours bag; a weekend bag in grain leather; a two-handled, unstructured beach sac in soft grain leather; and a soft, tactile document envelope.
Introduced to Berluti footwear this season is a new trainer, Open Air, which features a running-style profile and a rubber sole. Shoes feature copper reinforcing elements on the toe and heel. The classic Andy has a new, thicker sole. The Berluti Oslo shoe also features a sturdier sole and three styles of upper: Derby, boot and Velcro-strapped.
‘When it came to creating a modern, colourful and youthful new collection for Berluti for the winter season, I could imagine no better collaborator than Scott Campbell. His evocative designs hark back to the ancient heritage of early civilization while looking futuristic in their clean lines.’
– Alessandro Sartori, Artistic Director, Berluti
