Piazza Sempione (Q8899)
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Piazza Sempione is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Piazza Sempione |
Piazza Sempione is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Stefano Citron and Federico Piaggi, Piazza Sempione’s creative directors, focused on the label’s well-established connection with the Milanese design scene for their fall presentation. They appointed photographer and video-maker Pasquale Abbattista to work on a project in which six young women, all variously and prominently involved in the design world, were filmed chatting about various topics of relevance—the relationship between fashion and design; craftsmanship versus technology; the pervasive nature of social media; sustainability and consumption. Being that all the women involved are intelligent, socially engaged, and intellectually engaging, it was a pity not to have time to stop and listen to them in full, but running between shows is a reviewer’s life.Tempus fugit, as the Latin saying goes—and Fashion Week too.In the videos, the posse was obviously filmed wearing what they deemed fit from Piazza’s fall collection. What they liked were masculine coats in printed leopard and elegant double-breasted pantsuits in Prince of Wales with elongated blazers. Or else feminine pleated skirts printed with geometric patterns, worn with slightly oversize cashmere sweaters in painterly colors. Piazza Sempione provides an intelligent wardrobe for intelligent women: Well-cut pieces with an unobtrusive yet appealing fashion gradient, timeless but updated with an au courant vibe. A soft tailored blazer in a beautiful cerulean hue; checkered culottes; a poplin shirt embroidered with a delicate floral motif—that’s all we need in our wardrobes to get on with our busy daily lives, comfortably well dressed and ready to engage with the world in smart conversations.
23 February 2020
Stefano Citron and Federico Piaggi, Piazza Sempione’s creative directors, opted for an intimate presentation in their showroom this season. Ensconced in the hidden courtyard of a historic Milanese palazzo, the location underlined the label’s link to the reserved, practical, and elegant style of the city. To further pay homage to its Milanese roots, the designers enlisted artist Riccardo Paternò Castello to create an art project. Called “Milanese Attitude: An Emotional Geolocation,” it’s a series of portraits of aristocrats, creatives, and artists, all born and bred or simply based in Milan.The collection walked on familiar Piazza Sempione ground: a well-balanced wardrobe of daywear pieces, versatile and practical, infused with ease and elegant simplicity. Soft tailored blazers in textured linens were combined with masculine striped shirts with discreet details—little twirling ruches, contrasting piping,ton-sur-tonstitching. Relaxed palazzo pants looked perfect for summer city days, layered under elongated belted waistcoats in thick striped linen. Fit-and-flare dresses cinched at the waist had a fresh feel, tie-dyed in bright colors. Prints were reduced to a minimum in favor of graphic patterns in black and white, almost textural and minimal. The standout was an artsy watercolor floral motif, gracing a desirable, feminine shirtdress in cheerful, summery colors.
20 September 2019
Being a cinephile obviously isn’t enough to qualify someone for a successful career as a fashion designer; yet movies have always been a gold mine of references for many collections, often helping to substantiate their narratives. Piazza Sempione Resort was an example. Taking their cue from the Italian filmLa donna della domenica(The Sunday Woman), shot in 1975 by director Luigi Comencini, design duo Federico Piaggi and Stefano Citron were (not surprisingly) fascinated by Jacqueline Bisset, who starred in the movie alongside Marcello Mastroianni. Her character, an alluring Turinese bourgeoise with a conspicuous dark side, was the collection’s elegant muse.Dark side notwithstanding, the chic restraint of her style resonated with the label’s understated, discreet tone of voice. The daywear offer, which is Piazza’s forte, was, as usual, full of wearable options designed with elegant practicality. Soft-tailored pantsuits in light wools with abbreviated jackets; clean-lined short shift dresses in crisp poplin; trench coats and dusters in a delicate neutral palette. These were no-nonsense pieces to wear every day to look well put together with effortless ease.As the saying goes, “God is in the details.” It’s definitely the designers’ mantra here. Every item came with sometimes undetectable, but finely executed, minute finishes, which turned simple shapes into something rather special. A masculine white poplin shirt was outlined by a scalloped organza trim in contrasting color; a ribbed cotton sweater was bonded at the front of a poplin blouse in discreet trompe l’oeil mode; what looked like a cotton lace jacket was actually part of a fit-and-flare black cotton dress.On a more decorative note, an abstract print of tulips blossomed on faille blouses and circle skirts, while on fitted poplin shirts, stripes were mixed with florals, injecting a summery, fresh feel into the collection.
7 June 2019
For their Fall collection’s presentation, Piazza Sempione’s creative directors, Federico Piaggi and Stefano Citron, entrusted young Italian filmmaker Chiara Battistini with the production of a short movie. It was shot at Villa Borsani, a Rationalist gem built in northern Italy in the ’40s by Milanese architect and designer Osvaldo Borsani, and recently opened to the public. TitledChasing Light, the film is a delicate, poetic portrait of a girl caught in a romantic moment in time.Collaborations with female artists were brought about by the two designers as a way of giving the label a credible connection with the zeitgeist. Since their arrival, they’ve been working at updating the house’s codes while sticking to what the label stands for: a practical, versatile, and elegant daywear style, restrained but not severe, bourgeois but with a twist of gentle modernity. So far this choice has proved successful. Retailers seem more than happy.For Fall, the collection read as a well-edited urban wardrobe affair, with daywear taking center stage, designed with neat minimalistic lines softened by subtle, gentle details. A streamlined micro houndstooth city coat with a studded collar was worn over matching flared pants; an ankle-grazing riding coat in soft black double wool-cashmere felt both easy and chic. Pantsuits were also a strong point, proposed in tailored masculine versions in pin-striped wool or light tweed; they were apparently inspired by a ’70s Helmut Newton picture of Charlotte Rampling, beautifully androgynous and impossibly chic in a single-breasted blazer and slim cigarette pants.
23 February 2019
The pantsuit’s longevity has been well documented in movies, where it has been celebrated as the distinctive, sometimes rule-breaking uniform of many Hollywood megastars. Who doesn’t remember Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, and Ingrid Bergman looking glamorous in their elegant tailored jackets and fluid trousers? In more recent times, images of Lauren Hutton in Paul Schrader’sAmerican Gigolo, one of the aesthetic-defining films of the ’80s, stay in our fashion memory among the chicest examples of the seductive allure of a masculine-inspired wardrobe. Hutton’s stylish charisma resonated with the creative duo behind Piazza Sempione, Stefano Citron and Federico Piaggi, for Pre-Fall.Tailoring is making a comeback, pushing streetwear to the fashion sidelines. That puts Piazza Sempione in a rather good spot; trousers and soft tailoring have always been its forte. Working on an updated and expanded offering of blazers and jackets was a sort of no brainer for the designers, who are industry veterans. Riffing on the familiar masculine/feminine dynamic, they played on a variety of new proportions, slightly reducing the oversize fit and making it alternatively boxier or shapelier, or else giving classic tailored shapes a modern twist, as in blazers that morphed into abbreviated peacoats discreetly decorated with contrasting stitched details. Traditional masculine wool fabrications were threaded with Lurex or silk, which gave the textures a supple, smooth finish. Trousers were proposed flared and palazzo-style, or fitted and cropped, while shirts came in many versatile iterations, the best of which was a crisp poplin softened with graceful, cool details.
14 December 2018
Piazza Sempione staged its Spring presentation in one of the lavishly stuccoed historic palazzos Milan seems to have an endless supply of. In one if its sumptuous salons, an exhibit paid homage to the location from which the label took its name, the actual Piazza Sempione, a vast square in the city overlooked by the Arco della Pace, a monumental arch completed in 1838. Four young, talented Italian female photographers (Rosi Di Stefano, Claudia Pasanisi, Stefania Paparelli, and Valentina Sommariva) were entrusted to give their interpretations of the Spring collection in a series of pictures staged in the piazza, which were displayed not on the salon’s damask-wallpapered walls but in a flat, concentric, piazza-like formation on its floor.The collection was true to Piazza Sempione’s style of easy, breezy pieces for the everyday, which could be the unfussy, practical foundation of even the trendiest woman’s wardrobe, designed as they are with clean, modern, timeless lines. As unobtrusive as they could seem at first glance, they actually revealed subtle, smart details that gave every item—a tailored linen peacoat, a perfectly cut masculine striped shirt in the crispest poplin, a sleek shirtdress printed in a floral abstract pattern—a discreet individuality.Piazza Sempione’s style is quintessentially Milanese in its restraint, yet the collection was devoid of any severity and actually had a fresh, relaxed vibe. A long skirt in printed cotton with black-and-white floral motifs paired with a matching ruffled shirt could be picture-perfect for a weekend spent in Portofino, the go-to destination of chic Milanese families, as could a pair of well-cut capri pants in deep-dyed cotton in shades of pale yellow and ivory, worn with a matching boxy shirt. They could look good on a young girl-about-town havingaperitivoin the famous Piazzetta with her posse of well-heeled friends, but also on her mother, relaxing after a day spent at sea, sailing on the family’s boat. Piazza Sempione’s collection had an inclusive, effortless flair; we can predict that it’ll fly off the shelves with equal effortlessness.
25 September 2018
Jean Seberg, the gamine charmer of Jean-Luc Godard’s masterpieceBreathlessand unofficial Nouvelle Vague muse, was the inspiration behind the Piazza Sempione Resort collection. Her pixie blonde haircut and her unfussy Breton striped sweater and capri pants were once so famous that Madonna replicated them in her “Papa Don’t Preach” music video. The contemporary superstar Kristen Stewart has been cast in the role of Seberg in the upcoming independent movieAgainst All Enemies, directed by Benedict Andrews. (Yet beyond her beauty, effortless elegance, and androgynous style, Seberg’s tragic life is a painful reminder of the depression and unhappiness that is often hidden behind a glamorous facade.)Seberg’s unique mix of Parisian chic and American ease was what Piazza Sempione’s design studio tried to capture in a collection focused on wearable, no-nonsense pieces for day in a lean, minimal silhouette. Shirting was given pride of place, offered in many iterations including crisp striped cotton with a menswear vibe and elegant yet relaxed silk combined with organza. Striped shirtdresses had elongated, comfortable lines, while jackets cut short and boxy and worn with cropped capri pants looked modern and laid-back.A small graphic motif, inspired by Bauhaus muse and textile designer Anni Albers, graced the cotton jacquard surfaces of sleek pantsuits, fluid day dresses, and trapeze-cut shirt jackets; it was a delicate decorative touch to an otherwise neutral palette of blues, khakis, and pearl grays.
11 June 2018