Peter Pilotto (Q7805)
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Peter Pilotto is a fashion house from BOF.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Peter Pilotto |
Peter Pilotto is a fashion house from BOF. |
Statements
Peter Pilotto and Christopher de Vos decamped to Milan this season, swapping their usual London location for a deep dive into the Milanese fashion zeitgeist—which somehow seemed to rub off on the collection. Trading their usual elaborate silhouettes for more streamlined, utility-friendly shapes, they took a turn towards a decidedly simpler, straightforward aesthetic. “Being in Milan seemed like a natural step to take,” explained Peter Pilotto, who’s half-Italian. “Recently we’ve come to Italy often working on leather goods, and fabrics have been made in Italy since the start of the label; we’re also producing part of the collection here.”A rich textural work on materials like lurex, brocades, and jacquards together with a whimsical sense of color and a play on elaborate yet feminine shapes have always been at the creative core of the designers’ vision. The added bonus of a high-energy artsy vibe has kept things interesting and progressive. “We’re known for our occasion dressing, perfect for cocktails and parties,” explained Christopher de Vos. “This season, we wanted to explore a more everyday, utilitarian look. Probably it has to do with us spending so much time here, mixing pleasure and leisure. Exploring the Italian feel for practicality.”On the catwalk, there were plenty of desirable, practical looks which would easily fit into any wardrobe. Separates abounded: oversized polo and bowling silk shirts in bright colors; workwear-inspired roomy, boxy jackets in washed denim; soft-tailored blazers in shiny satin; crisp silk dusters in beautiful shades of acid green and sapphire blue. Worn with abstract printed tops and slouchy, easy pants and Bermudas, they looked, well, easy and sensible.For the first time, a small menswear offer was also included in the show. “They’re almost gender-neutral pieces that can be worn both by guys and girls,” said Pilotto. Here again, the silhouettes were relaxed and fluid, energized by lysergic colors and symbolist-inspired, smudged-floral prints.Yet as the show progressed, one was yearning for a bit of drama—or at least a jolt of British irreverence and sense of humor which, injected into the Milanese flair for discipline, could’ve produced an unruly, off-kilter, emotional mix. The best part of the collection was actually when the designers let their expressive, imaginative side do the talking.
A play on draping, twisting, and asymmetries looked compelling, gracing short dresses with flowing lateral panels and belted sashes, keeping silhouettes lissome and dynamic with askew-knotted details. The all-over print and fabrication mix added an optimistic, sunny, slightly over-the-top theatrical vibe, hitting a high note and feeling true to the label’s spirit. The disciplined Milan would’ve definitely welcomed a dash of witty, entertaining flamboyance.
18 September 2019
After the tiki extravaganza at Trader Vic’s last season, the Peter Pilotto designers decamped to the library for Fall, taking their show to the inner sanctum of the members-only Reform Club on Pall Mall. The good times seemed to be rolling all the same, though, and the collection was primed for the twinkling lights of the disco. Iridescence was the order of the hour with metallic plissé maxi dresses and tiered fil coupe frocks with balloon sleeves. Christopher de Vos and Peter Pilotto tend to look for print inspiration in unexpected places, and this season they found it in the holographic works of Zsolnay, the famed Hungarian ceramics brand. Colored in shades of woozy brown and pink, the resulting patterns recalled late-1970s wallpaper. There were other references to the world of interiors, as well, including a mottled red velvet pajama-style suit replete with tassels to rival the drapes of the fancy venue.Like several London designers, De Vos and Pilotto have been thinking along quintessentially British lines lately. Their checked woolen jumpsuits and skirtsuits were finished with glittering crystal-encrusted buttons and spun with Lurex thread to fit the more-is-more mood. If that weren’t decadent enough, the feathered trimmings satisfied the opulent brief and were used liberally on mini bags and pussy bows where sequins might once have ruled the night.That said, the unabashedly high-wattage nature of the collection could have been toned down in places. In the end, the subtler items stole the spotlight, like the blush pink midi dress with frayed jacquard detailing and the belted check trenchcoat that was dotted with dashes of silver paint. Pieces like these won’t lose their luster in a party wardrobe.
17 February 2019
If tiki bars are undergoing a renaissance right now, then Trader Vic’s is basically ground zero for the trend. Victor “Trader Vic” Bergeron opened his first bar in the early 1930s in California, and now there are countless outposts of his Polynesian-inspired night spot, including one that sits under the Hilton hotel in London, where Peter Pilotto held its show.There was a distinctly nostalgic glow about the collection, too, thanks to its 1970s feel. Designers Peter Pilotto and Christopher de Vos referenced the days of disco for Fall, and they kept the retro good times rolling tonight with preshow Champagne and tiki cocktails that put the crowd in a convivial mood. On the runway, the louche pajama suits of Fall gained a more tailored line this time around, cinched with tasseled belts. Pilotto and De Vos also experimented with iridescent fabrics, adding a simmering layer to lurid floral maxi dresses and jumpsuits. The brand made its name with bold prints and colors, but here it was the graphic fil coupe and metallic looks—such as the gold pleated dress and tiered ombré blue number—that seemed most likely to get you noticed at the bar come the spring.
16 September 2018
Peter Pilotto and Christopher de Vos have been talking a lot among themselves about how to take their clothes off the runway and into real-life settings that add to their resonance. In the end, they joked that their decision to show in Tramp, the long-established Jermyn Street dining-disco club, actually helped them envisage a louche ’70s inhabitant of the place. “The idea of having a dinner here answered questions in the process, like, ‘Oh, what would she wear to come here?’ ” said Pilotto. “Or, ‘What would she wear to have fun?’ ” exclaimed De Vos.They sat their audience at circular tables, set with their new collection of patterned plates, then sent around a starter and plenty of Champagne. The second course was the clothes. Some of the dresses were vaguely reminiscent of Ossie Clark (who certainly sold endless bias-cut dresses to the ’70s girls who haunted Tramp); some of the silk satin pantsuits and jumpsuits echoed Saint Laurent from the same sort of period. “We like the idea of this whole opium, psychedelic, ’30s opulence with the prints,” said Pilotto. A heady scent—tuberose, was it?—added to the atmosphere as the girls wove between the tables.
18 February 2018
Great summer clothes are all about context—the light, the warmth, the way things sit on you, how much you can forget about them, no? Peter Pilotto innately understands that, mostly. When he and his partner, Christopher de Vos, unplug and go off to visit a foreign jungle (for instance), they’re two guys looking for color and surface pattern inspiration. Okinawa, the northern Japanese island, was their destination last summer, where they took in the sights of the lush vegetation—Pilotto has pictures of lotus flowers blooming in a misty landscape—and unwound by taking ikebana lessons. A third, constant influence is the women around them, such as their friend artist Francis Upritchard.What they came up with for Spring ’18 was a collection of “misty pastels” in striped jersey, techno satin, lace, and stylized ’70s jungle prints (the last a London cousin of the prints in Marc Jacobs’s collection, shown in New York last week). Here comes the snag: The show, held in the Palm Court of the Waldorf Hilton hotel, featured young, mostly white models whose standard neutral expressions and extremely slight physiques undermined the fact that these clothes, with their asymmetric handkerchief-point midi hemlines and strappy, cutaway tops, would better fit grown women in relaxed holiday situations. The colors—mint, lavender, tangerine—looked better when carried by the few black girls in the show. In that artificial runway situation, the casting was a stumbling block to imagining how this summery wardrobe would fit into the lifestyles of the many women who are keen Pilotto customers. They’re clothes that ought to be carried off by ladies having a good time. Even a few smiles would have helped.Which is too bad, because Pilotto and De Vos have a large, extended circle of friends of all nationalities—and, just across town, have taken up temporary residence in a large townhouse, decorated by them and furnished with their eclectic collection of contemporary furniture and art. There, to coincide with the London Design Festival, which is overlapping with London Fashion Week, customers will be able to hang out and try on the collection as well as pick up or order the fixtures and fittings they fancy. There aren’t many designers in London who can so seamlessly bridge the gap between fashion and interiors. The Peter Pilotto brand has the potential to bridge interiors and lifestyle, as well. Their world is already there, down to the punchy paint colors and carpets.
An immersive fashion show—maybe even worn by friends rather than models—in that home environment would have given the clothes the context they needed to come alive.
18 September 2017
As the world spins ever more crazily, and mass consciousness drowns in oceans of social media, designers’ instincts are increasingly drawing them to seek out all kinds of personal, real, and friendly feeling antidotes. Peter Pilotto and his partner, Christopher de Vos, are two London exemplars of that movement. When the landlord of the Brompton Design District made them an offer, they temporarily transplanted the brightly colored contents of their East End world, complete with furniture, art world friends, and their Pre-Fall collection, to a small shop right opposite the V&A. “We redecorated the whole place in six weeks,” says Pilotto. “We thought it was a great place to show our personal interests and our London life, where we have loads of friends from different practices.”Thus, the Pilotto store became a drop-in for their Pre-Fall trunk shows. Says De Vos: “To be honest, direct-selling to customers has been growing for us. We used to rent a showroom or a hotel room for appointments, but this turned out much more economical. And we thought, in this retail universe which can be cold and impersonal, it was great for people to enter a kind of a home and spend time. Even if they started off shy, they’d often get into it, try new things with their friends. It’s really a different way of paying attention to clothes.”The collection, which is hitting stores now, is an interesting osmosis between the designers and the women they’re around. “We all tend to be drawn to the same odd combinations of color, probably because we’ve all done so much traveling, seeing things which go in from all over the place.” They’d loved the colors their artist friend Francis Upritchard painted on her stand at Frieze. One of them is a pale orange, which De Vos, who was raised in Peru, instantly identified with as “the color of lucuma fruit from my childhood.”Essentially, it’s a high summer collection drawn from trips to the south of France, where they visited a house Jean Cocteau had decorated (hence the continuous-line, squiggly embroidery), and to Puglia in Italy, where they absorbed the patterns of local ceramics. Mostly though, it’s just about a lifestyle and a creative support group—and just for a little while, an escape from the worries of Brexit and the British electioneering going on in the city outside.
27 April 2017
The Palm Court at the Waldorf Hotel in Aldwych was taken over by Peter Pilotto and his partner Christopher de Vos for their Fall show. This London theaterland relic—once the site of afternoon-tea dances, and now more familiar to tourists than the fashion crowd—received a makeover as Martino Gamper’s colorful stools, a patchworked couch, rugs, paintings, and various objets d’art were shipped in. Among these furnishings—a simulacrum of the contents of any aspirationally arty domestic interior inhabited by the sort of women who buy Peter Pilotto—the girls wended their way.First out were Linton tweed parkas and variants on padded and quilted utility outerwear. The embroidered riding boots and the thick fringing on the knitted coats and chunky sweaters seemed to be summoned from de Vos’s cultural memories—he is half Peruvian. The social crowd he and Pilotto live among today, however, have a lot of gallery openings, dinners, and biennials to go to, all over the art world. They will, no doubt, be kept happy by the sight of the printed asymmetric-hemmed midi dresses and scarf necklines and the watermelon silk velvets—ideal attire for making conversation at art fair booths while looking good from every angle. This collection didn’t constitute any leap forward for the brand, but the options should keep existing customers feeling warm toward it.
19 February 2017
It was a sunny afternoon on Haggerston Riviera whenPeter Pilottoand Christopher De Vos invited their guests to an open-studio visit to view their South American–influenced Spring collection. The designers behind the Peter Pilotto label are travelers by instinct—world citizens of design, in a sense. They’ve spent a lot of time in Peru and Colombia on vacation recently, exploring museums, looking at folk textiles, investigating the heritage of the Spanish Baroque, and enjoying the landscape. Besides that, the pair are longtime natives of London’s East End fashion and art community, a place where the cross-pollination of creative ideas and people from many countries has been flourishing naturally. That’s what London’s new mayor, Sadiq Khan, means by his campaign #LondonIsOpen—a public celebration of the benefits the British capital has gained by welcoming in such entrepreneurs as the Austrian-Italian Pilotto and the Peruvian-Belgian De Vos.So the designers’ canal-side studio, where the collections are designed, was the scene of the show, which their local friend, the contemporary New Zealander artist Francis Upritchard, had collaborated on, supplying her artwork for jeweled patches that appeared on such pieces as cropped, bleached jeans. Still, the sources of the collection’s theme were subtly managed. The silhouettes, a continuation of the Resort collection, were feminine and breezy. Long skirts and dresses, tapering into deep fishtail flounces, predominated, cut from ice-cream color linen, abstract flower prints, or filigree gold lace.It’s a strength of the Peter Pilotto brand that it has transitioned away from being purely about print. In their travels, Pilotto and De Vos have absorbed knowledge of how to provide clothes that work for young, sophisticated women who live in many climates. The finale dresses, volumes cut from draped taffeta, were dramatic but easy to wear. It was a trip worth making to see the place where these things take shape.
18 September 2016
Something about next season: Are long, ankle-grazing skirts a directional step forward that will carry on to spring? This thought struck as a girl swooshed intoPeter Pilotto’s studio in De Beauvoir Crescent in North London, wearing a hot pink taffeta skirt with a flounce in the hem. It was cut a little bit up at the front, thus cutting out the issue of tripping over fabric as she walked. Plus, Pilotto and his design compadre Christopher de Vos had smoothed the silhouette through the waist and hips by inserting vertical panels of pintucks, thus doing away with bulk-creating gathers around the waist. In movement, it looked breezy, flattering, and a much newer proposal than a ’70s retro maxi—and something you’d want to wear during the day, as well as for an event or suchlike.A few days earlier,Erdemhad also shown a head-turningly romantic long skirt is his Resort collection in London. So this is a fresh idea to ponder on—the notion of a top and a long skirt, rather than a dress. It seems like too good a notion not to carry forward.Pilotto and De Vos said they’d come up with the beginnings of the collection while traveling. “We’ve been to Latin America a few times recently—to Peru, Ecuador, Panama, and Cuba,” Pilotto said. De Vos was making a trip home—he was raised in Peru—and their research led them to look at a museum collection of Inca textiles, and especially a portrait of a bride who had married at the time the Conquistadors arrived. The virtue of their design method is that thanks to their ability to blend influences like broderie anglaise edging, off-the-shoulder ruffled blouses, and macramé-lace, their clothes don’t look like too-obvious folkloric appropriation, or carnival costume.Anyhow: Full points to them for producing a well-considered Resort collection, which has also triggered thoughts about what we might want to wear right into next summer.
7 June 2016
Icy Nordic landscapes and skiing.Peter Pilottoand Christopher De Vos came back with a strong collection for Fall, and a distinct step up in modern sophistication. Pilotto is Austrian, from the Tyrol, so he knows his slopes and slaloms. Fortunately, there wasn’t a pair ofsalopettesin sight on the insulated silver runway, nor the slightest hint of athleisure. Rather, the influences were subsumed into the designers’ meditations on the colors of frozen landscapes and skies, a trek north in the imagination instead of on foot or by sled. Well, none of us are going out into a blizzard clad only in a gorgeous floaty Lurex dress, are we?In terms of shape, this collection chimed with the long-line, vaguely late-’60s/early-’70s maxi-coated, midi-skirted silhouettes that have been pouring out of London this season. However, Pilotto and De Vos arrived at it via their own route.The designers are particularly gifted as colorists—Pilotto’s retinas seem able to pick up chromatic subtleties beyond the normal visual range—and in common with so many London-based designers, they’ve become experts in layering lace, deploying embroidery, and inventing ways of foiling, painting, and appliqué. All of that was remarkably controlled in pieces that remained supple and unconstricting, starting with a neat bodice transposed from the high-neck shape of a ski sweater, and flowing down to the just-above-ankle length they pioneered seasons ago.This season they also came up with a slew of coats—a beautiful narrow hooded one impressed with silver discs particularly stood out. In other news, jewelry sparkled in the hair and dangled from gold hoop necklaces—the designers’ new collaboration with Atelier Swarovski. It all looked like a journey very much in the right direction.
22 February 2016