FALL WINTER 24 COLLECTION
“CONTINOUS THEATRE”
Thanks to the lack of stage, the show will extend to the entire auditorium in the theatre and, starting from the floor, will climb up the walls thanks to delicate gangways, physically envelop the audience, and hold it in an uninterrupted atmosphere of light, images and sound.
Antonin Artaud
Starting from a long way away, crossing snowy wilderness, freezing and desolate deserts in which a community of women defies the cold and founds a world of beauty, ritual and magic. A tribe which, like a travelling theatre troupe, never settles down in one spot, but draws a piece of its identity from every place or person it encounters, inspired by stories and ideas, by the opportunities that arise and by its imagination. Arthur Miller said that theatre is fascinating because it is accidental in the same way as life is; this is confirmed by the story of cyclical resistance, rebirth, protest and liberation staged by the presentation of the DURAZZI MILANO F/W 2024 collection.
Taking the disruptive power of a philosophy based on experimentation and interdisciplinary to a city gallery, DURAZZI MILANO sets up a tripartite stage in which a group of performers enact an existential journey. It is the unfolding of a gradual undressing, in which the collection is revealed one layer at a time, beginning on the surface of a frozen lake, against a background of dazzling snow-covered landscapes where wild horses gallop. There, among piles of raw wool, the group breaks down and reassembles a mirror surface, before moving into the second set amid floating vinyl backdrops.
There the performers form a circle and hug in a ritual dance that celebrates the community and the continual rebirth of life after winter frosts, of young shoots defying cement. When they reach the third scene, these modern Amazons, the interpreters of a uniform aesthetic embellished with fetishistic details, become the identity of the brand.
They shed their layers of fabric, and their boots sound out the beat of a march, like in a choreography by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, on a stage covered by a forest of microphones.
As in a wild, erotic, riotous dance of liberation, the voice of powerful women resonates increasingly loudly, empowered by technology that makes them superhuman.
The cyclical, continual and obsessive movement of the group over the three sets expresses the same accidental nature of everyday life, in a mise en scène in which DURAZZI MILANO, paying tribute to the lessons of John Cage, offers a performance that combines the arts, celebrates the unpredictable and change, and represents life.
This ideal community, which travels towards the future transforming itself and celebrating a collective spirit in an uninterrupted dance of rebirth and evolution inhabits the DURAZZI MILANO F/W 2024 collection. This features timeless creations with austere lines, the descendants of menswear and tailoring, and a constant focus on the quality of materials, enhanced by artisanal craftsmanship that is the best of Made in Italy.
The tribute to craftsmanship is clear in many of the deliberately unfinished details, in the praise of the imperfection of handmade knitwear, with woven-in and loose threads, in the elegance and uniqueness of the leather decorations on coats, stoles and bags.
The simple silhouettes and the shapes inspired by minimalist architecture that have become emblematic for the brand are accompanied by a new softness, a deliberate juxtaposition of seemingly contrasting volumes and patterns, and a quest that emphasises secondary materials that are usually used for the internal structure of clothes.
The combination of craftsmanship, tradition and research leads to outerwear that reinterprets classic models such military-tradition raincoats, parkas, liners and bomber jackets, innovative full skirts alongside the classic saddle skirt made with performance textiles, such as airy waterproof muslins with alpaca appliqués or fabrics made of waxed horsehair, and also padding, tartan or fur patchwork, with a preference for all shades of grey which, in all its tones, reveals its power as colour.
With an aesthetic that has the casual flavour of objets trouvés, or which refers back to the improvised creation of stage clothes through the use of painted fabrics assembled in an apparently rough manner, the entire DURAZZI MILANO F/W 2004 collection fully expresses its DNA, its hybrid identity, consisting in studied or accidental heritage, innovation and tradition, of a journey understood as growth, inspiration, change and no longer just a change of location.
