Krizia (Q4961)
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Krizia is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Krizia |
Krizia is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
1997
worked for
designer
1960
1963
Krazy Krizia was Mariuccia Mandelli’s nickname, and it was an apt one. Her idiosyncratic taste was reflected in a style heavily rooted in her ‘80s heyday: androgynous silhouettes with exaggerated power shoulders and elliptically cut banana pants; metallic plissés; and a Pop-inspired menagerie of wild animals knitted onto oversize sweaters. Krizia’s fashion legacy can’t really be defined as timeless, indebted as it was to the visual codes of that time. Head designer Antonio D’Anna, appointed with the not-so-easy task of revamping the house, is banking on its still-valuable ‘80s currency—but for how long? The wind is changing and the ‘90s are now back in fashion. For Resort the designer did the only thing he could do when confronted with such an era-charged vocabulary, which was to rework Krizia’s codes with one eye to the heritage and the other to current market trends.The archive was obviously extensively mined; D’Anna came up with images of Mandelli in the ‘80s mingling in night clubs and at parties with starlets and politicians. Milan at the time was swept by wild consumerism and hyperbolic entertainment; scantily clad would-be divas were dominating the scene. The quite tricky citation (that set of values actually anticipated the infamous Berlusconi’s era) led D’Anna to a series of ironic visuals, including a pair of bare legs in garters, black sheer stockings, and high heels, which he had printed all over on masculine silk shirts or on satin truck suits. Note to young designers: Some references are probably better left in the archive.The collection worked best when the ‘80s inspiration was smoothed and lightened, as in an elongated white poplin shirt juxtaposed with a sheer, double-layered organza parka in acid yellow and worn with elevated black joggers. An oversize cotton shirtdress, studded with metallic grommets mimicking a futuristic broderie anglaise grid effect, was also a case in point. The menagerie of wild animals roamed the collection; cheetahs, giraffes, and monkeys were printed onto denim pants, or blown up as an all-over black-and-white jacquard pattern on a sleek pantsuit, or else were knitted into a red stretchy pencil skirt paired with a matching batwing blouse. Even a stingray-inspired motif turned up on a pair of egg-shaped, thick-leather pants. They looked quite stiff. In the end, the animal patterns were a touch overwhelming; you’ll really need to be a nostalgic to wear them.
25 June 2018
Antonio D’Anna quoted Bret Easton Ellis’s seminal novelAmerican Psychoin his show notes. Though it was published in 1991, the book is set amidst the excess of 1980s New York, a moment, D’Anna pointed out, coincidental with “the height of Krizia’s original influence on international fashion.” Fortuitously for D’Anna, who is now in his third season at the label, the ’80s are in the air again. That could work in his favor as he tries to revive interest in designer Mariuccia Mandelli’s codes. Among them were sculptured shoulders, blouson shapes, pleats, and animal intarsias. D’Anna touched on all of those signatures and more, too. Mandelli had a penchant for unusual materials; here, that manifested as stiff-looking black eel-skin suiting and, weirder still, a puffer coat and track pants in bulky lamb fur.What would really work in his favor is if D’Anna found ways to inject more simplicity into this collection, and create the kind of pieces that women need and want to wear every day in 2018. As it was, he came closest to that sense of vitality with a nicely tailored black pantsuit accented with metal suspender clips. Likewise, a bright red wrap coat with kimono sleeves made a potent statement amid the deshabille of sheer knits and a silk plissé top that peeled off the shoulder. In 1987, Mandelli was quoted saying, “Everyone must dress as they like, provided that the dress becomes for them a second skin.” D’Anna has potential, but he should keep Mandelli’s words in mind as he starts developing his next collection.
23 February 2018
For Pre-Fall, Krizia’s head designer Antonio D’Anna focused on the label’s historic trademarks: geometric construction, futuristic plays on pleating and folding, and prints of wild animals. He modernized shapes and volumes, refreshing proportions, relaxing cut, and playing with lightness. What gave the collection a certain appeal were the reworked animal prints; an entire zoo of panthers, zebras, cheetahs, leopards, and Great Danes was dissolved into abstract patterns, which were visually quite impactful. They were printed on elongated knitwear tunics worn over long plissé skirts, appeared as rubberized motifs on trapeze jackets in cotton canvas, and surfaced on silk blouses wrapped at the waist with huge bows.Krizia had its heyday in the ’80s; a distinctive feel of that era was clearly in evidence. Tailoring was one of the brand’s staples; here masculine pantsuits, once powerfully shouldered and severely cut, were softened and given more fluidity, while coats in oversize volumes were slimmed and elongated with a minimalistic approach. The primary color palette of white, black, navy, and red highlighted the streamlined attitude of the collection, which had elegant, softly architectural undertones.
19 January 2018
This was runway show number two for Krizia’s young designer Antonio D’Anna. Amid the model jostle of the tiny backstage space, he returned to the word experimentation again and again. D’Anna was talking about fabric, cut, and embellishment, but the Krizia project, in general, qualifies as an experiment. How do you revive a heritage label whose heritage is only remembered within Italy, and even then only by ladies of a certain age? When a brand doesn’t inspire nostalgia, returning to the codes only goes so far. Forget honoring legacies, the questions become: Are these clothes relevant to the times? Do they fulfill women’s needs in such a way that they’ll choose Krizia over a more familiar, buzzier name?House founder Mariuccia Mandelli’s most famous Krizia-ism was her animal motifs. The problem is, Alessandro Michele has the animal-motif category all sewn up. It’s not easy to compete with Gucci, even if D’Anna’s jaguars and eagles are fierce where Michele’s wild things are quirky. D’Anna worked hard modernizing Mandelli’s signature pleats, adding asymmetries that created loose volumes on short dresses. But beyond those hallmarks, there’s not much history to build on at Krizia. Given that, D’Anna’s efforts will be best spent identifying and refining his unique selling point. It’s early days but his tailoring shows promise. Kimono-style sleeves gave his jackets an appealing sense of ease, as did the offhanded way a few of them were belted. He should keep moving in this direction.
22 September 2017
Krizia, the Italian label founded by Mariuccia Mandelli in 1954, was named after a philosophical remark about vanity in one of Plato’s dialogues. Critias was actually a man who squandered his riches by alluring the women he was courting with all sorts of luxurious gifts. Apparently, Mandelli loved to remark, “I hope I’ll meet many men like Critias along the way! How lucky I’d be then!” She changed the name to Krizia to make it more exotic.Mandelli died in 2015 at the venerable age of 90. Called “Crazy Krizia” for her zest for the avant-garde, she had a fierce personality and was fearless in her oddly experimental designs. The label became one of the pillars of Italian fashion in the ’80s and ’90s, after which it receded into the background. After many twists and turns, in 2014 it was acquired by the Chinese entrepreneur Zhu Chongyun, a woman who studied electronic engineering before founding a high-end fashion company in Shenzhen, China, in the ’90s. It has since grown into a vast empire. As of today, it counts over 400 monobrands and 4,000 employees, 80 percent of which are women.Her first runway show as creative director was Fall 2017. For Resort, Chongyun continued to revive the house’s codes within a modern perspective, adding an artsy touch. Mandelli’s penchant for lucky animals must have resonated with the designer’s Chinese cultural background; this season, sea turtles in every possible version were happily swimming throughout the collection. They were printed on round-shouldered, short city coats in thick cotton canvas, embroidered on roomy knitted sweaters, and discreetly hidden in linings. Their carapace texture was also reproduced on big round paillettes in burnt plexiglas for a 3-D effect, stitched all over a simple knee-length shift dress. It was a nod to the unusual synthetic materials Mandelli was fond of displaying in her collection. Her idiosyncratic ’80s personal style was also referenced in big-shouldered, elongated, androgynous blazers, worn with bold black-and-white striped, high-waisted pants.Pleats, another Krizia staple, were also a leitmotif, as in a sunflower yellow trapeze dress worn with matching pants, a pleated volant sneaking elliptically around it. A voluminous organ-pleated jumpsuit in ivory technical crepe looked like a soft carapace; the same shape was proposed in a printed version, whose geometric patterns were inspired by the Russian abstract Suprematism artist Kazimir Malevich.
Shapes were architectural and at times challenging, as were fabrics, with their thick, substantial textures. The liaison with the art world was highlighted by the collaboration with the young art photographer Andrea Artemisio, whose lookbook images had a conceptual, staged, theatrical feel.
11 July 2017
There are new developments at Krizia, an Italian label that was once one of the pillars of Milan fashion but hasn’t really been relevant in a couple of decades. The brand—founded by Mariuccia Mandelli, who died in 2015—has been purchased by Zhu Chongyun, a fashion entrepreneur of no small success in her native China. She is the creative director, and she has hired Antonio D’Anna (who worked for MSGM’s Massimo Giorgetti) to be her wingman; they came out for a bow together.Their mandate is to revive the house, using the archive without making it feel like Mandelli’s ’80s and ’90s all over again, which is par for the course in such cases. And so, Krizia’s famous animal prints reared their head in many different variations, but the shoulder pads and outsize volumes of the era didn’t. One of Mandelli’s hallmarks was the crisp yet characterful white shirt, not unlike her contemporary, Gianfranco Ferré—another label of the time period that has since languished. This collection had but one, paired with a neat black wrap skirt. Miss Zhu, as she is known internally, and D’Anna tried many other things: camel outerwear, fluid trapeze dresses, a couple of furs, a Balenciaga-ish suit. All of it was efficiently well done, if not exactly oozing with personality. That’s one of the challenges of bringing an old brand back to life— it is most difficult to resurrect its soul. Perhaps it will come with time for these two.
24 February 2017
Curiosity over the lines of succession at well-established houses is becoming one of fashion’s favorite preoccupations. What happens when a designer reaches a point in life where stepping back seems only natural? And how can a label be injected with new energy, without losing its singularity? Mariuccia Mandelli, who is still very much hands-on in her own design room, has called in the London designer Hamish Morrow to work through those questions over the last two seasons at Krizia, and she clearly has confidence in his talent; at the end of her Spring 2004 show, she brought him out in front of the audience to take a joint bow.Leafing through the results of their collaboration backstage, Mandelli pointed out the "sport chic" elements that made it into the collection. Morrow, who has his own fledgling line back home in London, is a modernist with an interest in technical fabrics, and his hand was evident in details like leather parachute harnesses on dresses and swimwear. His eye for bright, slightly jarring color combinations showed up, too, in tonal placings of shades of green, orange, and yellow. Mandelli also drew attention to the high-tech materials that can only be produced in Italy—modern luxe inventions like steel gauze (made into light, crinkly trenches and jackets) and washable leather, which Morrow used for biker pants. White leather zippered bodices and body-hugging dresses, meanwhile, projected a souped-up sexiness rather than Morrow’s instinctive taste for abstraction. Only time will tell whether this relationship will ensure a sound future direction for the house. But it’s certainly an interesting start.
1 October 2003
Krizia’s indomitable Mariuccia Mandelli has worked with a battalion of gifted designers, from Walter Albini in the ’70s to more recent conscripts Alber Elbaz and Jean-Paul Knott. This season Mandelli tapped the 34-year-old Hamish Morrow, whose own-name collection was a highlight of the London shows, to be her creative squadron leader. Morrow’s goal was to stay true to the spirit of a house celebrated for its sophisticated knitwear and adult approach to Milanese style, creating, as he put it, “expensive, luxe clothes that are effortless without being banal.”Instead of the opulent fur and crocodile seen on some other Milan runways, Morrow opted for a sense of luxury through the “volume of the fabric.” His pelican-collared coats and waisted jackets, often worn with skinny-leg pants and boots, provided a more creative take on the ’80s/Alaïa trend that has surfaced so strongly this season. Brought in to collaborate on the collection just two months ago, the designer worked with existing fabrics, which juxtaposed double-face wools, metallic python and a thick, cracquelure leather with airy chiffons and crepe; the typical Krizia palette was in effect—carbon, tarnished silver and storm-cloud gray—with some injudicious viridian-green accents. But even if Morrow’s quirky, innovative use of color was missing, his hand could be sensed in the studious draperies and in details like the cashmere gauze pieces poetically overlaid with cloudy tiers of chiffon ribbon.
28 February 2003
Midnight blue, Afghanistan blue, China blue, Prussian blue—Krizia's collection demanded one word: blue. The effect was strangely hypnotic, forcing the audience to look more closely than usual at the cut and fit of the clothes. Tailored jackets and coats sported small rounded shoulders and important collars, while simple rectangles of fabric were worn as wraparound cloaks, with two side slits as armholes. Sheer pareos and scarves were layered and used as skirts. A welcome chromatic respite came in the form of tie-dyed spirals of white on cashmere knits, but the real surprise arrived at the end of the show: the sea of azure was interrupted by a series of jeweled evening dresses in peach, orange and rust that looked absolutely dazzling.
22 February 2000