This article is part of a series that examines: responsible fashionand innovative efforts to address problems in the fashion industry.
“For me, fashion has always been about fun and beauty,” said Marco de Vincenzo as he paced his showroom in the Casa Galimberti, one of Milan’s most ornate Art Nouveau palazzos. “But today fashion has to convey more important messages, and my own mission in fashion has to go beyond mere creativity.”
Mr de Vincenzo, 44, a Sicilian designer who has emerged as one of the brightest new stars in the last decade of the Milan runway calendar, was surrounded by racks of the latest collection for his eponymous brand. The garments were proof of his renewed commitment to sustainability: at Fashion Week in February, instead of newly crafted clothing, he presented vintage, revamped with his own panache, covering coats, skirt suits, sweaters and more with sequin meshes, fields of metal studs and accents. from shiny rivets to a craftsmanship-intensive transformation of thrift store finds into one-of-a-kind pieces — some costing upwards of $2,000. De Vincenzo said the collection, called Supérno, was a way to understand the potential of upcycling.
“What I do next will be linked to this formula,” he said last month, gazing out his window into the distance of Milan. “Maybe soon I will get a new role on a bigger stage and I can apply this principle when I start guiding a bigger brand.”
On June 1, Mr de Vincenzo was named creative director of Etro, the fashion house in Milan known for its high-quality paisley prints and Italian hippie glamour. LVMH-founded private equity group L Catterton, which has long been a globally successful but family-run business, bought 60 percent of the brand last year, with plans to expand its international growth. As the brand’s first chief designer from outside the Etro family, Mr. de Vincenzo will oversee the range of women’s, menswear and interiors while maintaining his longstanding position as chief designer of leather goods at Fendi.
“I hope to include upcycling in the first runway collection in September or soon after,” he said in a recent interview, his first since announcing his new role at Etro. “There is still a lot to do to understand what sustainability means when it comes to bigger brands like this one, but today they are embracing recycling for capsule collections and special editions.”
From the vintage of his own line to his future endeavors at Etro, he sees a new form of luxury taking shape, with unique or small runs made from the inherently limited stock of recycled materials. While Etro declined to comment on what kind of project could happen under the designer’s new leadership, the fashion house, which started as a fabric factory and produced textiles for decades, has crafted capsule collections from archival fabrics.
A new path was lit for Mr de Vincenzo during the contemplative early years of the coronavirus pandemic, when there were no runway shows to worry about, and his brand went through a two-year hiatus. In 2020, he bought back shares that had been owned by LVMH for years, allowing him to pull out of the fast-paced, high-production and high-profit demands of working with the powerful luxury conglomerate. Later, when he entered the Marco de Vincenzo archive to take stock, he was overwhelmed by the sight of 6,000 sample garments that never saw the light of day. “Such a huge amount of wasted ideas, resources, money and time,” he lamented. “I know how much effort craftsmen put into these things.”
He returned with the upcycled clothes of the Supérno collection – clothes he personally bought from charity shops, which he then asked artisans to embroider and embellish, bringing iconoclastic twists to their original ladylike forms. But only a few long-term partners agreed to give the niche project a shot. One was CIM, a factory north of Milan that intoxicates fabrics with all kinds of rhinestones, studs and spikes, in collaboration with fashion houses like Balmain, Louis Vuitton, Versace, Armani and Prada. (“The haute couture of rhinestones,” as a riveter put it there.)
“No one had ever asked us to work on vintage,” said Angela Galbussera, who oversaw Mr de Vincenzo’s collections at CIM for years while more than two dozen artisans were at work, clamping rhinestones in place. and studs fastened with tabletop rivet presses, with discarded baubles scraping under the foot. Drawers were filled with deposits of pearls, imitation gems, mirror tiles and glued confetti, and each bin was teeming with sparkly bits packed together as densely as sand.
Mr de Vincenzo’s vintage clothing must be worked on mannequins, where the artisans map out rhinestones and chalk the placement of studs before attaching them one at a time – a much more time-consuming method than their typical embellishment of fabrics that laid flat on tables. And every Supérno piece is unique: a neat black swing jacket with spikes along the collar and cuffs; a stern headmistress gown with space-age silver bubbles trimming the bodice and pleated hem; a short sleeve jersey for figure skaters, icy cold with rows of faceted crystals. “Industrial production,” said Mr. De Vincenzo, “is excluded here.”
The Supérno collection received critical acclaim when it debuted in Milan, but store buyers flinched, citing concerns that the one-off items defied their merchandising protocols, the designer said, so the fall clothing will be sold on its own website. But investors, he said, have shown interest, and he will continue his namesake brand and his mission of reuse, perhaps at a slower pace, as he leads Etro and continues to design accessories at Fendi.
Some of the biggest fashion brands have answered the call for sustainability with efforts such as Miu Miu’s special series of recreated vintage dresses and restyled Levi’s, Marni’s patchwork jackets from cut up old clothes and Coach’s handbags from archival wallets from the 1970s. And Mr. De Vincenzo pointed out that Fendi has made significant efforts to use leather and fur scraps that would previously have been discarded and to support artisanal craftsmanship against industrialization, which he called “another important aspect of sustainability.” Yet, with a few exceptions, these are small-scale projects by major brands.
The fashion industry involves countless actors – business leaders, factories, investors, designers, retailers, all people who wear clothes – who will have to agree to produce and buy less, and get more out of what we already have to fight the tide. wave of overproduction still programmed in the supply chain in general.
“How much was written during the lockdown about slowing down and being conscientious?” asked Mr. de Vincenzo. “But the old rhythms and expectations turn out to be too deep-rooted.”
But when you talk to the designer as he goes on to run a global luxury brand, you meet an emissary of hope. Its own upcycled line, like perhaps all sustainability projects, is imperfect. CIM’s glitter surfaces – made of quartz, metal and polymers – are not sustainably produced or easily recycled, and will have a long life in a landfill. “There are always compromises to be made,” replied Mr De Vincenzo. “If I had gone looking for 100 percent perfection, I probably could never have done anything. With Supérno I managed to stop producing new garments. We all need to think about what we can do.”
The most critical step for brands is to reduce excess fabric and apparel production, he said, an approach companies are trying to perfect, using the better predictive sales tools available today.
“The culture of waste is coming to an end,” he said. Individually, “the most important thing is to do your part in the macro image. The battle we face is too great to be discouraged if we don’t see immediate change.”
At Etro, he sees the opportunity to incorporate sustainability into at least some of the brand’s output. “You create change by contributing what is possible, not what is perfect, to the cause.”