Kinder Aggugini (Q4940)
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Kinder Aggugini is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Kinder Aggugini |
Kinder Aggugini is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
One of the great things about working in fashion is that designers are constantly introducing you to their obscure or offbeat references. Cult films you've never heard of, art you've never seen, the handicraft traditions in far-flung locations, etc. In that vein, Kinder Aggugini is owed thanks for bringing the Cottingley Fairies hoax to the fashion public's attention. Back in 1917, it seems, two girls in Yorkshire created photographs that appeared to prove the existence of fairies; a surprising number of people bought into the shots, and their loudest champion was none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Who knew?Not this reviewer. And as inspiration for a collection goes, the Cottingley Fairies hoax makes for rich material. It's a shame Aggugini didn't do better by it. There were some very nice, rather simple dresses in patchworked, Art Nouveau-esque fairy prints, and Aggugini was on to something interesting with his buttoned-up maxi dresses and knife-pleated coats. The latter looks conjured a vintage sensibility without quoting any specific look or era verbatim. Aggugini's pattern of "escaping moths," in his phrase, was not only beautiful but also extraordinarily invested and witty; the moths were embroidered onto shredded organza that had been layered onto silk. You got the sense of a dusty trunk being opened for the first time in decades and the moths flying out all at once, leaving the tattered remains of a feast of dresses behind.Thatis storytelling in clothes. And here again, Aggugini's story got at vintage indirectly, and from a new angle.Why the disappointment, then? Frankly, the collection just seemed halfhearted, as though the designer had exhausted himself in its conceptual development and couldn't muster the energy to execute with sufficient polish or coherence. Aggugini likes his clothes to look a bit raw, generally, and that's fine; here, however, there were too many pieces that came off slapped together or just unfinished. And in the meantime, there were too many silhouettes and construction ideas to make a clear proposition; Aggugini should have spent more time elaborating his interesting pleated coats, for instance, and his dresses' long, cocoon-ish sleeves. And there were more than a few outlying looks that should have been edited out completely. There were too many good ideas here not to appreciate this collection, but as a whole, it never lived up to its own potential.
16 February 2013
Count on Kinder Aggugini to come up with a take on nautical that is simultaneously the world's least and most straightforward. Least straightforward in that Aggugini has spun himself a baroque tale, by way of inspiration, that takes inThe Old Man and the Sea, a girl and a boat both called "Lola," and a sailing trip to Cuba provoked by a desire to escape the repressive bonds of dry land life. That's a pretty substantial narrative framework on which to hang the handful of seafaring prints that made up the core of Aggugini's collection. Buoys, mermaids, anchors, sea horses, and swordfish all made an appearance in the characteristically arch prints, the kookiest of which was a map of imaginary archipelagos. Most straightforward: buoys, mermaids, etc. Least straightforward: fake antique maps of made-up places, based loosely on bourgeois tea-towel prints. The train of Aggugini's thought visits some rather distant stations.Really, though, the un-straightforwardness of this collection was all in the service of clothes that were pretty conventional. The silhouettes were almost all non-challenging—pinafore dresses, dungarees, button-downs, and shrunken tailoring comprised the core of the collection, with a recurring appearance by a pleated skirt with an intriguing bagged waist. The palette was pretty by-the-book, too, girded by ur-nautical red and blue. There were some eccentricities here—Aggugini being Aggugini and all—but they read merely as flashes of madcap. Octopus tentacle dévoré velvet is odd, but not quite odd enough to outweigh the normalizing look of, say, a shrunken navy double-breasted blazer worn with long, cherry-red shorts. Aggugini is a designer with zero fear of the overt, but that look was a tad obvious, even for him.
14 September 2012
By all rights, today's Kinder Aggugini show should have been a total mess. Its theme was "appropriation," according to the show notes; in practice, that meant that this collection was a cheerfully postmodern mash-up of cowboy motifs, baroque wallpaper, traditional menswear silhouettes and fabrics, Delftware, kids' TV icons, and more. How all of these references came to be sharing space in the hothouse of Aggugini's brain is a question for another day, but they formed a kooky unity on the runway.The standout pieces were the ones in cowboy-dappled prints, in particular the sculpted minidresses and short skirts that had been treated with an acid to dislodge stray fibers. Aggugini aggressively mixed prints and materials, and the effect was chaotic, but appealingly so. There was an eccentric schoolgirl vibe here, one accentuated by the designer's integration of rolled-up tweed short shorts and oversize Melton wool coats into the mix; as with last season, you got the sense that his muse was that girl rummaging around in thrift-shop bins and getting inspired. The looks closing the show had a more grown-up affect: Aggugini turned out several pieces in a black tulle embroidered in wallpaper flock-patterned sparkles; he gamely played the material against a black silk printed with sculptures, and another in navy and white polka dot. Again, these looks should have been a mess, but Aggugini's artful juxtapositions gave the clothes a disheveled elegance.
17 February 2012
Count Kinder Aggugini among the London designers bringing Girl Power back into vogue. He has been tussling with the fraught state of girl-ness, in this case loosely defined less as a time of life than as a state of being: His girls, of any age, are struggling to find a balance between society's feminine codes and their own restless, rebellious instincts. That's an interesting starting point for a collection, and Aggugini made something interesting and rather beautiful out of it, though his interpretation of the theme was more narrowly referential than, say, Christopher Kane's abstract take on it, or Meadham Kirchhoff's manic, political stance.The big reference here was the nineties—to some degree in the look of the clothes, and very much in the collection's ersatz, roughed-together tone. Given that the decade was perhaps the peak era of riot grrrl thrift-binning, it makes sense that there were references from other eras embedded in the larger one: Apparently, Aggugini's strategy was to gloss a variety of silhouettes from the girl-power heydays of yore. Thus there were drop-waist dresses redolent of flapper apparel; bias-cut frocks that updated World War II-era looks; and minidresses, replete with studs, based on punk motorcycle jackets. The latter came off a bit novelty, but on the whole the dresses were very good, and were threaded through with signatures like painterly floral prints and studious unfinishing.There was a dreamy feeling here, accentuated by the slight off-ness of Aggugini's cuts, as well as a clever obscuring of print beneath layers of semi-sheer chiffon. The effect was very winning. He also did well with a group of dresses embellished with both flower petals and punk pins—the motif could have been too on-the-nose, in terms of the theme, but the embellishment was well judged, and the dresses too damn pretty to complain about, really. On the whole, this collection was an evocative one for any woman who came of age in the nineties, or any younger woman who fetishizes the era and its girlish insolence. Aggugini nailed the mood.
19 September 2011
Kinder Aggugini is hardly a household name in America; even most stateside fashion fanatics didn't know much about the man until Macy's tapped him for the store's first designer collaboration. The Kinder Aggugini for Impulse clothes are in Macy's stores now, and in a backhanded way, they inspired the excellent collection Aggugini showed today."It was amazing to see what they can do with mass production now," Aggugini said after his show. "Because of the volume, they can order incredible materials for very little cost; they can do great things with finishings. But going through that process made me think hard about what 'luxury' must be, to distinguish it from what is mass-produced."What Aggugini determined—and what was plainly evident from his Fall '11 collection—is that luxury must entail handwork. Inspired by Peggy Guggenheim's eccentric style, he turned out a host of winning pieces deconstructed in seemingly naïve ways—to wit, the paneled pencil skirts with their broad topstitching, as well as raw-edged dresses and coats cut out to reveal linings. You'd never mistake this for the work of an amateur, though: The tailoring throughout was assured, and Aggugini was insanely inventive with his materials. He used only one wool—cashmere—and boiled it and bonded it and felted it and dip-dyed and spray-painted it; silk was subjected to similar processing. There was also some decidedly non-naïve technique applied to the garments' construction: Aggugini's slouchy parkas, for example, came with densely pleated collars. (The versions in yellow dip-dye and the collection's excellent floral print were standouts.) All in all, the verdict on Aggugini this season is a big thumbs-up: If Macy's hasn't made him a household name, then this collection ought to do the trick.
18 February 2011
The story behind Kinder Aggugini's Spring collection was a not-so-dark Heart of Darkness. The designer came across a book on the nineteenth-century Scottish explorer Mungo Park, who became so obsessed with Africa, he simply disappeared there. The biography lent a romantic structure to the merger of the Savile Row alum's talent for tailoring with the colorful and graphic codes of African dress.Aggugini began his journey into the continent slowly. The first look out was a double-buckled kilt and white blouse that opened to reveal a vaguely tribal black neckpiece. He segued from there into safari tailoring and a beautiful softly constructed chesterfield coat that looked as if it were made from all black mud cloth. When it came to brightly saturated printed dresses, Aggugini's goal was to cut them to look like a single piece of cloth knotted by the wearer. That's an idea that could easily fall flat, but these were more elegant than literal, with cowled necks, nipped waists, and knotting here and there.The best parts of the show had a wonderful push-pull between the two worlds. That tension was best embodied in the hats that Aggugini asked Stephen Jones to make as if an African tribe—well before the Internet age—happened to find his lookbook and re-create it. Jones did them up from used cardboard boxes and other detritus. A jaunty little top hat finished a black draped tweed vest and lean black silk skirt that revealed a sliver of tie-dyed color. Its fine mix of eras and cultures was totally chic here and now.
18 September 2010
When a designer claims an influence like Madame Récamier, arch-salonisteof Napoleonic Paris, you might anticipate the historicism of a Galliano or a Westwood. And given that those two are certified fashion visionaries, you might feel nervous for the tyro prepared to take on such an excavation of the past. But Kinder Aggugini is no tyro—he's actually worked for Galliano and Westwood—and besides, he was feeling Récamier as a defiant punk of her time. It was hard edge, not historical romance, that determined the tone of a collection that should, if there is any fashion justice, be Aggugini's breakthrough.The Napoleonic connection gave the designer the chance to do what he does best. The first outfit said it all: military-precise cut, high collar, army green with red trim but opening up to reveal the flirtiness of Kinder's signature dot lining. In other words, strict but sexy. Another topper combined the same ingredients, but it was caped, like a general's coat. There was a little drummer boy's jacket in Napoleonic red and a spectacularly sleek black coat with slash pockets lined in the same eye-catching shade. The skinny pants beneath, also red, were more Juliette Lewis than Juliette Récamier, an indication that the romance in this collection was driven by rock 'n' roll. Hence the biker jackets in black leather and velvet; the sleeveless Lurex coat over skinny pants; or the big, fuzzy bad-girl sweaters (the bold and the beautiful might brave them as dresses).Still, Récamier's name wasn't on the invitation for nothing. Kinder's flowing jersey eveningwear was shaped by the Empire line of her era. Maybe the elegantly draped navy dresses were, too. The designer also showed muslin shirtdresses (paired here with swag-backed mohair-alpaca knits). Women back then would soak the muslin to formfitting effect, and promptly catch their death of cold. Superstar set designer Michael Howells was keen to re-create the trend for today's show, but good old health and safety said "No!" to suffering in the name of Napoleonic style.
19 February 2010
Kinder Aggugini once referred to his work as an unholy marriage of Coco Chanel and Sid Vicious, which signposts his own special brand of sophistication—superchic, somewhat unsettling. His Spring show was called "The Loss of Innocence"; the invitation featured a battered Snow White figurine; a music box tinkled as the audience filed in. So far, so macabre. And that impression was subtly compounded when the first models emerged. With hair ringleted and lips reddened, they looked like dolls, and their clothes were dolls' dresses that had been taken apart at the seams, then reconstructed with inserts of racy adult fabrics like black lace and pin-dotted tulle. Aggugini created an exaggerated hourglass silhouette with full overskirts that flared off the waist like a bubble, forming aprons and bustles and panniers. There was something of a Fragonard milkmaid about the result, like Aggugini's ex-employer Vivienne Westwood or maybe even Marie Antoinette playing country girl in her Petit Trianon. Either way, the volumes didn't play to the designer's strengths as a tailor, so it was a relief to hear him set them aside as showpieces. "I sell more jackets than dresses anyway," he said later (though he also noted that the post-show response to the full skirts had already been so positive he might consider production). And he'll likely be selling plenty more of his jackets, especially with standouts like the silvery number lined in gossamer-light pink tweed, the cropped houndstooth, or the topstitched swallowtail based on a military jacket from the Crimean War. His evening dresses also shed the fairy-tale frippery in favor of an entirely grown-up world. A python-printed gown in laser-cut nylon, hand-painted in neon shades, floated down the catwalk, an edgily graceful collaboration of man, woman, and machine.
18 September 2009
Kinder Aggugini's debut might have come across as an entirely proper affair of tailoring and soft printed dresses were it not for the clue embedded on either side of Erin O'Connor's head. The model may have been wearing a quite conservative, though well judged, navy pantsuit and a couple of pretty layered camisoles, but her little flicked-up "ears" of hair directly evoked Soo Catwoman, the famous punk fixture of Kings Road circa 1977.That giveaway is a key to Aggugini's background and track record: Far from being the usual defenseless upstart-around-London, he's an experienced Italian designer who fell in love with British street style of the late seventies and early eighties, got himself into Central Saint Martins, and since then has worked his way around fashion via a bespoke tailoring gig at Huntsman in Savile Row and studio jobs at Vivienne Westwood, Paul Smith, and Versace. He's been in business on his own account for two years, testing out his neat redingotes; double-breasted coats; Coco-channeling tweed jackets; and high-shouldered, narrow-sleeved evening peacoats on fashion editors—a picky lot who have flocked in increasing numbers to place private orders from him at his Bayswater flat.It's given him four seasons' grace to work out signatures—polka-dot silk linings, ribbon ties laced into cuffs, antique jet buttons, tailor's tacks left to trace the lines of jackets and coats, and a way with splashy floral prints. The result: the welcome public launch of a brand that aims to approach a grown-up "working woman" wardrobe without the heart-sinking predictability that usually entails.
20 February 2009