Andrea Pompilio (Q2644)
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Andrea Pompilio is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Andrea Pompilio |
Andrea Pompilio is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
For Spring, Andrea Pompilio has stuck to his signature eclecticism, but, perhaps, with a bit more of a social observation broken in. He was thinking of Rimini, on Italy’s Adriatic Coast, in both a nostalgic manner and as it is now, where “the young and the old are sort of both on full display.” (Though this collection definitely skewed younger and more contemporary.) He was also considering his own experience of waiting in line at a gas station, en route to said beach town, and watching the attendants in their uniforms. This memory resulted in a pleasingly color-balanced gray/cobalt/black jacket, with the initials AP stylized and italicized on the chest.“I think to do something that’s very nice, or beautiful, becomes easy. I like the idea of taking something that might not look so good outright, but then figuring out a way for it to work,” said the designer. This zone, or overlap, is Pompilio’s forte—consider for Spring a knitted vest, featuring a reinterpretation of an ’80s-era tourism ad, over roomy trousers made of the kind of canvas used to stretch beach chairs. A rather opulent oddness, made more so by a suspender cord retooled as a belt. Striped or palm tree–printed short shorts also had this eccentricity apparent, and a bit of a throwback touch, too—the sort of breezy, carefree garment any style-conscious guy now thinks of when it comes to Italian summers, courtesy ofCall Me by Your Name. And if a full look may sometimes veer too mixed or too astray, the trick to Pompilio’s output is that, de-styled, the pieces make for fine solo numbers. The mash-ups, rather, are his way of saying we shouldn’t collectively take all of this fashion stuff so damn seriously. And that’s a nice point to walk away with.
16 June 2018
This season Andrea Pompilio changed things up in his Milan showroom with a static presentation of nine looks worn by models lolling on wooden pallets. Below each look was a consignment label reading “AP Supermarket” alongside a delivery date for either July or September 2018. This was to signal the opening of Pompilio’s new e-commerce platform (atAndreaPompilio.it), which he said will allow him to operate outside the six-month collection cycle and deliver product in drops to be shot by emerging photographers.This collection veered between the nostalgic and the Pompilio-flavored forward facing. Backward glances included ringer neck striped T-shirts; top-stitched, baggy, cotton-lined wool “denim” in black; washed blue denim with ironed-on creases; loafers with stud-edged soles and contrast-color uppers; a big jacket carried over from last season; and check cotton flannel shirts with contrast-check sleeve hems. Future-facing pieces included hooded jersey tabards, and two great technical parkas (one in check with a high-vis side stripe on the arm, the other in a lurid but compelling blue nylon). A Loden-esque topcoat, slightly oversize, came in an orange check, and an irregularly woven striped jacquard sweater was delivered inverted to make the analogue detail of its stitching a decorative headline.Pompilio is hard to categorize beyond the quixotic variousness of his sometimes lovely product and a keen eye for top-notch fabrication: Let’s hope his digital supermarket allows customers to find their way into his world.
13 January 2018
“I was thinking about what I’d like to wear in the city after work, but then on vacation too. We are in Italy and we are lucky—we have a whole month off,” said Andrea Pompilio on this sweltering Milanese afternoon. (Everyone in the showroom was daydreaming about his or her upcoming exodus from town—for his particular holiday, Pompilio will jet south to Cape Verde.) The designer’s Spring collection is a contemplation of what one might do if he or she could no longer bear it and had to get out ASAP, hastily packing before heading to Malpensa and buying a ticket to wherever wanderlust beckoned strongest. In expected Pompilion style, though, this wasn’t some slapdash scramble—the designer has a lot going on visually in his clothes, but he’s a sharp editor.There were: baggy T-shirts with Oaxacan embroideries on the breast pocket (these were standout pieces); sweatshirt-material tops with a giraffe-toile print (these, less so); stringy, inside-out beach-bum jumpers; great bomber jackets with industrial namesake placards (because at the end of every getaway, the city and its working life await); and an enhanced focus on plaids. “I like how they clash,” said Pompilio, holding up a pair of russet-checked “dry cotton” Bermuda shorts against an alternatively schemed shirt. Also, slouchy, multi-tonal denim hit a high note; this was almost like Andrea Pompilio’s interpretation ofInherent Vice. Think: a hybrid of faded ’70s, half-baked beach vibes blended with his de facto Italian polish and idiosyncrasy. It wasn’t necessarily the best trip ever, but it was enough to make this writer reconsider his next resort wardrobe.
16 June 2017
Imagine some impossible fantasy vintage store in which no garment was quite like anything else you’d seen, everything looked as if it might speak to you, and it was all in perfect condition. When he gets it right, as he did here,Andrea Pompilioproduces the clothes you might imagine filling such a store. Why vintage? Not because his clothes look old or dated, but because they are all made with great tactile care.This season Pompilio used a slightly spongy, supersoft, and lightly bobbly felted cashmere flannel in blue and black to make white-stitched jackets worn over loose six-pleat pants. The fabric was also used in his sweatpants, with stitched side lines in different hues dependent on the colorway and fabric. Other fabrics included gray jersey and golden jumbo corduroy, which he used for a moleskin-shoulderedRoyal Tenenbaums–ish suit. Lumberjack check was promoted from shirt to jacket. Yes, it’s true, that was a Native American illustration on his Scottish wool sweaters, but Italian and U.S. cultural sensitivities are not yet in sync.Shirting came sometimes collarless with delicately frayed necklines or with a clever detachable ruffle that allowed the wearer to channel his inner fop or de-ruffle for conventional contexts. The polished burgundy loafers had laces topped with gleaming beads of Murano glass. This was a collection to delight in going through, holding up to the light, and seeing if something sparked.
13 January 2017
It was in 1998 when, following a (pretty amazing) first gig assisting Neil Barrett at Prada, 20-ishAndrea Pompiliotook his first trip to New York to improve his English and eventually land a position at Calvin Klein. He had limited funds: Back then, Alphabet City was still a congenial neighborhood for the economically challenged, so he rented a place there.“For me, everything was very new. And I was so impressed by the people who lived in that area. It was such a mix. I still remember these people who were dressed in a crazy, bold way; cowboy boots mixed with pin-striped pants and synthetic polos, the huge chains and all the rings, the colored sunglasses. You can imagine, I was coming from Prada where everything was perfect and everything was black or brown, so the effect was very powerful.”Like those powerfully styled inspirational New Yorkers, this collection made impactful virtue of disjunctively unconventional combinations. A tailored, grainily textured cotton jacket in a check of navy and khaki got along fine with its sportswear-sourced ribboned-on-ribbing baseball jacket sleeve. A white-on-blue shadow-striped shirt was oversize and featured a raw unfolded collar. A jacket bodied in tight houndstooth and armed in check had its insides pulled out—the internal pockets and sleeve construction were on the exterior of the garment.A nylon blouson with his seasonal triangle-strafed stripe detail at the chest was Pompilio’s take on the K-Way. He hauled the trucker jacket into new territory by building it left-handed, and making it tricolored, also in nylon. A great fabrication was his inside-outside intarsia of denim stripes. Jeans were washed to appear lighter at the front than the back, as if some wearer had already spent many hours facing the sun.Baggy chambray and both-sides denim pants were tethered by drawstring. They flowered out at the thigh, then tapered in again toward the ankle. While photographed worn high in his lookbook—“Because it seems more ’90s”—Pompilio sported them slung low in his showroom. To be able to turn this designer’s clothes inside out and catch all the witty little asides he delivers via detail was much more satisfying than seeing them on the runway would have been. Pomplio said: “I’m always attracted to people with bad taste more than people with good taste. Because it is people with bad taste who are gong to surprise you more.
” While Pompilio is not one of those people—quite the opposite—this fine collection was stuffed with look-again detail and delicately delivered jest.
17 June 2016
Andrea Pompilio’s studio, on the fringes of Milan’s Chinatown, made for an interesting venue for an interesting appointment about an interesting collection. Why interesting in triplicate? Well, in order, the studio used to be part of a factory operated by Doniselli, which is the Prada to Rossignoli’s Dolce and Silvestrini’s Armani in the pantheon of beautiful Milan bicycle-makers (a bit of a personal passion). Pompilio was walking past five years ago, wandered in, and fell in love with the place. The appointment itself was interesting, because it was in lieu of a runway presentation. That normally indicates sliding sales—so not enough cash to stage a show—but Pompilio insisted the reason was intimacy. He said: “This is my design office. Not my showroom . . . I decided to do a presentation here because I’ve been thinking how fashion has become so fast. Personally it’s grown in a way I don’t feel comfortable with. We work for months, the show lasts for six minutes, and sometimes I don’t have a chance to speak to anyone about it afterward because everyone is so stressed.”Well, that’s true. That’s the giddy gamble of the catwalk. But after last season’s badly presented show, Pompilio’s logic was compelling. And the clothes were, too. Going through a rack with a designer tends to be persuasive, granted, but there was a lot to want here. Rough-hemmed track pants and gray and blue fringed stripes felt light but substantial—and extremely forgiving. The alpaca-mix tank tops and sweaters in an interesting palette of bottle green, rich burgundy, and dirty taupe were nubby and tactile. Pompilio’s recurring military blazer—an homage to his grandfather on his father’s side (his other grandfather was a dandy)—was present and correct. Little details like artificially worn-out collars on city shirts were much more relishable on the rack than the runway. When you leave an appointment wishing you were taking several pieces of the collection with you, that’samore.
15 January 2016
"Love Me Forever or Never," demanded the slogan on Andrea Pompilio's lilac bowling shirts and jackets. OK, OK—but can't a guy just sit on the fence a little? The styling of this collection tried hard to signify a threw-it-all-together effortlessness—"weighted disorder" in Pompilio-ese—that sometimes could have done with looking like it had actually demanded a bit more effort. When you tried to look at these pieces isolated from that disorder, there were some things to love—maybe not forever, but for a while.Pompilio's leaf-print camo, oversized ruby shirts, and bottle-green silk track pants under a bicolored baseball jacket all worked well. At times the suiting was so sharp as to arouse thoughts of Canali—for whom Pompilio designs. The half-put-on chunky elaborations on the suede driving boot were part of Pompilio's imagined context: a group of pals all staying at someone's grandma's place in the country for the weekend. The idea was that they just pulled stuff on, some of it, possibly poor absent grandma's—"maybe the little culottes"—and some of it gardening boots that were just hanging around. This was Pompilio's 10th collection, he said backstage, and you could see how deeply the designer is locked into his internalized projection of his imaginary man. Pompilio could relax a little, though—maybe drop all those scarves—and focus on presenting the clothes as building blocks for others to play with, rather than obfuscating them with a garbled architecture of dressing. As a compadre summated nicely: "Who is thisfor?"
20 June 2015
If Andrea Pompilio's Fall collection wasn't quite worthy of a victory roll, it certainly deployed great consistency in its exploration of controlled exuberance through uniform. The starting point was the tropes of military airwear: jumpsuits, officers' tunics, bomber jackets, and those massive aviator jackets cinched in at the waist from the days when piloting was done alfresco in Sopwiths. On these were the shadows of chevrons, stripes, flashes, and military shields, as if they'd been unstitched when the jackets were decommissioned before being sold into surplus. Pompilio then reimagined his source material in monochrome gray or khaki, occasionally machine-gunned with flashes of scarlet, pink, and queasy yellow. A little turbulence occasionally diverted the course; a double-face lemon biker looked like it was sourced from the wrong mood board. But Pompilio's high-patch-pocket jackets over loose regimental-striped trousers reasserted formation.Funny little kit bags, unfortunately strapped shoes, and a lot of "AP" branding strafed the senses, but Pompilio's idea, although narrow, left him room for expressive maneuvers. A beast of a gray alpaca aviator with complementarily accented hems and a gray-on-pale-yellow double-breasted overcoat with a broad gray belt were both beguiling.
17 January 2015
An "homage to punk," as Andrea Pompilio described his Spring collection, could go down any number of roads, most of them well traveled. However, happily, his punks were not the mohawked minstrels of eighties London or those of last year's Costume Institute show, but rather the quiet, pensive kind—polite punks, if you will. And he finessed this angle in refreshingly innovative ways.First, a moment for the pleated shirt hems that dominated the collection with their daring un-tuckedness. Pompilio said they were akin to a "punk's kilt." Sort of a relaxed ruff for the waist, they brought to mind patrician nobility and served to highlight the filial friction at the heart of the designer's menswear. "Think of a noblesse family—for example, the Borgheses," Pompilio stressed, "where a father and son can be in the same room, but the son has his headphones on and the two are actually worlds apart."To strains of a violin, the collection revealed itself slowly, layer by sensational layer. Each suggestion of formality was blunted by an impudent street statement, creating an alluring hybrid of Ivy League correctness and art-school rebelliousness. Large, randomly placed holes—or eyelets—were modeled on earlobes stretched and disfigured by piercings, and sweatshirts were embellished with white studs at the collar or clusters of sequins. Horizontal bars were seen throughout, as functional straps or simply as decoration. The sunglasses, too, were a triumph of will, resembling two broken pairs made whole by fusing them together. Harmony at last.
20 June 2014
It seemed a peculiar extravagance for Andrea Pompilio, one of the bright hopes of Milan's fashion future, to produce such an expensive-looking book about his Spring show, slipcase and all. Aren't "young" designers supposed to be husbanding every nickel for their collections? But Pompilio made the book because he wants to make memories. They're that critical to him. After all, it was a memory—a picture of a young Andrea and his grandfather, an army officer—that launched his new collection.However, Pompilio mixed up his granddad's uniform with a polka-dot shot of club-kid cool and a groovy gallerist. And for some reason, that made him think of Berlin. So a smoky cellar haze hung in the air at the show, and Dietrich was singing "They Call Me Naughty Lola" on the soundtrack. (Prada last night, Pompilio today? Has Milan got a Deutscher thang goin' on?) Though he was understandably wary of over-literalizing, whatever track his mind was running on lent a spine to the collection as graphic as the turtlenecks that were the basis for every single outfit. And it clarified his design voice in the nick of time. There is little that chills a career as quickly as an unmatched expectation, and that Spring lineup was dangerously diffuse for a designer upon whom so much was being pinned.What was clarified here was Pompilio's facility with bold color and rich texture, delivered with a sense of humor (an invaluable asset for any designer). He seems to have nailed his particular niche: the ability to twist menswear classics without scaring the horses. A parka with a crackle-glaze finish, a blazer with a horizontal chalk stripe, a bomber in bouclé, a navy military coat backed in mélange—all of these signposted Pompilio's welcome evolution. And his embroidery-encrusted sweatshirts and tux/track pants were sparky takes on the season's athletic dressiness. The show was over in a flash, and that speed felt right, too. But it was a shame that Fall 2014 wasn't the collection Pompilio was slipcasing for the coffee table. Because memories are made ofthis.
12 January 2014
"Magic": Andrea Pompilio's rationale for Giorgio Armani choosing him to be the only other designer ever to show at Teatro Armani. And even if it came about because the grand old men of Milanese fashion are increasingly aware of the need to invest in the future, it's still easy to appreciate exactly why a relative newbie like Pompilio would feel there was something supernatural about Mr. A's stamp of approval.That's why you found yourself wishing that Pompilio had proved himself worthier of the accolade. His debut a few years back at Pitti in Florence was a very clear promise of a new rich and strange something in Italian menswear. Since then, he's been barreling down a road less quirky toward more commercial sportswear. With this collection, Pompilio felt he'd refined his offering, made it more sartorial (Suits! Double-breasted!) while at the same time recapturing the quirk of the prints that was his original strength. Vegas was on his mind. He was thinking about dressing up in desert heat. That created a confusion of color, pattern, texture, and proportion. Appealing, yes, but still confusing, and that situation was hardly helped by the handful of women's outfits that the designer offered. Pompilio has an eye for immaculate detail, which marks him as a true Italian designer—look no further than his footwear for proof—but this presentation suggested that the search for Milan's Great White Hope will have to go on.
21 June 2013
It took nine exits at Andrea Pompilio's Fall menswear show before a man arrived on the scene. That makes news, especially at the shrine to men's fashion that is Pitti Uomo, where Pompilio has been showing for seasons, ever since winning Pitti andVogue Italia's Who's on Next award. Backstage, Pompilio said he was just giving the people what they want. "They ask so many times for very petite sizes for women, so why not do it?" he asked. "Taking something for men and making it more female for woman." In return, it seemed, the women gave something more female to the men. Pompilio has never shied away from full-plumage colors, but the baby pink topcoats and flat-front pants he showed for men suggested a trade agreement between the sexes. So did the men's shoes, slip-on mocs tufted with puffs of fur. The girls, by contrast, had lug-soled lace-ups. "It's mix and match," Pompilio shrugged, "like life."It had its ups and downs, like life. The bracing peacockiness of the menswear was as brash as ever: "It's classic pieces," Pompilio demurred, and so it is, but he styles it (himself, mind) for maximum kook effect. The windowpane jacket, the pattern adapted from an old checked-paper sketchbook found at his mother's house, came with a polka-dot foulard and cotton-candy-colored trousers; that the model was also carrying a pair of leather gloves, like he would have been in a men's magazine spread of the eighties, only heightened the now-and-then effect. Also effective were the all-in-one looks that reimagined the suit as a matched peacoat and pants, or bomber and pants. Less successful was that first foray into women's. It seemed to owe a debt less to Pompilio's menswear but to the recent reigning champs of women's fashion: There was a wide swath of Céline here, bits and bobs of Balenciaga and Prada there. If his womenswear finds its footing and reaches the level of the menswear, it could be very good, indeed. And flats, like those he showed, are good for that.
8 January 2013
Andrea Pompilio's name is beginning to be known. He won Pitti's Who's On Next competition his first season out, and as his prize, staged a runway show at the fair last season. He returned to Pitti again this season to present his Spring collection to a full house. He's making his introductions in clothes. Describing his work backstage after the show, Pompilio called the show "very autobiographical." Looking at the miasma of colors, prints, and textures that he sent out, you'd have to conclude he was leading two lives or more. There was much going on in the multilayered looks, many of them accented in highlighter brights, with showpiece socks (a collaboration with a leading Japanese manufacturer) and plastic bucket hats.Sometimes ideas float in fashion's ether, to which many designers can be attuned. It was interesting to see motifs; terry shorts, mesh; that others have been toying with this season expressed again here through Pompilio's fisheye lens. But even where he has company in theory, his pieces stand on their own in fact. His colors and his flair for the odd set him apart. That perspective wants some honing, but it also confirms him as one to watch.
20 June 2012
Andrea Pompilio, anointed one of the up-and-comers in the Italian fashion industry by last season's Who's on Next awards, followed his gorgeous ethnic-gone-rococo Spring collection with something that channeled the urban jungle for Fall. He said it was all about maturing as a designer, but it felt like a lot of the quirk, strangeness, and charm that made Spring such a standout had been sidelined in favor of a more accessible metropolitan mood. Until, that is, Pompilio got to clarify his position. For instance, he'd chosen Cheetah, the recently deceased simian star of ancientTarzanmovies, as a recurring visual motif in the collection to represent the real animal within, which counterpointed the sportswear sophistry of everything else on the catwalk. And he'd imagined that, in dark times, there could be few things more uplifting than to swan into La Scala, Milan's legendary opera house, in a yellow glazed cotton poncho. Or to wear a fur-bobbled toque, or a goofy deerstalker. The guy clearly has a sense of humor.And he has an acute sense of how to transmogrify the staples of casual citywear. Combats, parkas, shearlings, and chunky knits were all tweaked to chic. But he also used lightly quilted pieces to stand in for sweaters under outerwear. That was a smart solution to added seasonal bulk. The tailored jackets looked clumsy by comparison, even if they suggested that Pompilio is a born colorist. He's also canny enough to appreciate how his aesthetic can translate into accessories. If the hats were a hoot, the shoes were a must-have.
11 January 2012