Olfactory Gestures. Niccolò Pasqualetti AW24

Niccolò Pasqualetti‘s work is like olfactory memory: it can be both elusive and evocative, you nearly think you’ve caught it, but then it fleets like a butterfly and you want to catch it once again. For autumn-winter 2024, the Italian designer and LVMH Prize semi-finalist, muses about ways of dressing formed by gestures, some re-imagined from Etruscan ruins and Renaissance frescoes, some observed in our contemporary times. In fact, an extension of fabric, thrown over the shoulder, makes a garment appear out of nothing but instinct: that’s the case with this line-up’s stunning tailoring and cape-like coats. Solid shapes, cut from cloth, are draped so that their solidity gives way to something more fluid. The latest collection orbits around the idea of riffling through the wardrobe, stuffed with old, but cherished clothes, and how the textures you encounter sweep you away from the present: denim from pairs of jeans in all different washes, scraps from a faux fur coat, a classic tweed blazer starting to fray. Pasqualetti also has an incredible sense of clashing textures and fabrications, which might origin from the fact he started out as a jewelry designer. Sheets of rigid metal collapse into themselves like sheets of paper. Worn as jewellery – a brooch to secure a scarf, a pair of earrings, a cuff over the sleeve – or even as clothing, the shiny warped surface reflects and distorts its surroundings. In the distorted reflection, you see wooden pearls assembled into a kind of “armor”, and leather which looks like crocodile skin forming a variation on the archaic silhouette: the pannier.

Styling: Samuel Drira Photography: Cécile Bortoletti Art direction: Sybille Walter Hair: Mayu Morimoto Makeup: Asami Kawai Casting: Chouaïb Arif Assistance: Eva Rapti Press release: Rhys Evans