Sara Battaglia (Q9091)
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Sara Battaglia is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Sara Battaglia |
Sara Battaglia is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Sara Battaglia kept things simple for fall: slender silhouettes, lots of masculine-inspired suiting, primary colors, crisp white shirts with thought-out details. She worked on wardrobe classics with lasting appeal—no diva-esque glamour in sight, but a polished take on the everyday.Battaglia believes that seduction can be subtle, and that it can go hand-in-hand with comfort and practicality. Her sartorial blazers, while rigorously cut, accentuate the waistline in a feminine way; the same can be said of the wide-leg, high-waisted trousers often paired with a white satin tee for an easy yet stylish look. “A tailored, powerful jacket can give you posture and confidence,” she said, “and being well put together shows a degree of respect for others.”The line is affordable while safeguarding quality. With prices of luxury brands soared to unprecedented highs, Battaglia sees opportunities in being more considerate, staying away from excesses both in style and pricing. It’s a smart move, one that gives an independent designer like herself room to survive, and possibly thrive: “What I’m after is giving women great pieces they can play with, staying in their lives and their wardrobes for a longtime—attractive fashion at the right price.”
5 February 2024
Sara Battaglia went romantic for spring. “I had a feel for sweetness, for some romance, some lightness; there’s so much weirdness around,” she said. She didn’t elaborate much on the weirdness concept. But we agreed on principle — there’s certainly no shortage of weird stuff happening in the world.Romantic for Battaglia means just slightly toning down the glam factor she favors, keeping the sensuality level high while playing with pastels, broderie anglaise, and macramé lace. Underlining a more tactile approach were textures like jacquard (the sharp-cut blazer was a standout) and cloqué (a breezy white sundress in a lightintrecciatopattern was also nice). A shirtdress in white macramé with flower appliqués was both theatrical and laid-back, and, on a similar note, voluminous tiered sundresses in crisp poplin bridged the day/evening equation.Yet Battaglia and unabashed glamour go hand in hand. A figure-hugging hot-pink satin evening gown à la Rita Hayworth had all the required showstopping attributes she likes, including a huge bow at the front. Romance was temporarily put aside. “I had to go to a party and I had nothing to wear,” she said. “So I made the dress on the spot for the occasion.” Obviously, she was the star of the evening.
26 June 2023
For her fall collection, presented in her new headquarters, Sara Battaglia was inspired by George Cukor’s 1939 black and white movieThe Women. The entire cast was female—even pets. A scathing commentary on the lives of rich Manhattanites, it included a fashion parade featuring costume designer Adrian’s glamorous creations. “It’s about the different faces of femininity, intrigues, adulteries, friendships,” said Battaglia. “And the take on fashion is so ironic and fun.”Battaglia likes women to be strong not only in their attitude towards life, but also in their fashion choices. She believes that a powerfully constructed outfit—sharply tailored, big-shouldered, cinch-waisted—can give you posture and confidence. It helps you fight your battles. She called her fall collection Because I’m Strong Enough after the famous hit by Cher, a fighter if ever there was one.Riffing on her best-ofs, the designer worked on variations of her strong-enough tailoring and outerwear. Pantsuits had hourglass-shaped double-breasted jackets worn over high-waisted palazzo pants; her best-selling tightly belted shawl coat in quilted nylon, whose ankle-grazing circle skirt had rather imposing proportions, was offered in fuzzy mohair, with a graphic black-and-white animalier pattern.The repertoire included serious head-turners, like a sexy body-skimming number in eye-popping turquoise, high-collared and long-sleeved but with a killer thigh-high slit on one side. A strapless satin jumpsuit in flame-red glossy satin was equally attention-grabbing. Glamour is a territory that Battaglia navigates with consummate aplomb.
26 February 2023
Sara Battaglia just opened new headquarters, where her RTW collection was neatly displayed, together with her newest shoes and bags. Plush and sleek, the space was a good indicator of Battaglia’s taste: modern, with a sexy undercurrent.The collection mirrored the ever present duality of her style, hanging in the balance between concealing and revealing, seduction and austerity. An apparently strict tailored suit was slit at the back with cut-outs; a neatly tailored white tux with high-waisted, wide-leg masculine trousers was worn over a matching backless waistcoat en lieu of a demure shirt.Battaglia, as she often does, played on variety, and on sometimes discordant alternatives. Silhouettes spanned the gamut from slinky to voluminous; a head-turning number in turquoise shiny satin was bodycon and sassy, while a long flounced shirtdress in striped poplin was the picture of demure restraint. Here, there, everywhere: as Battaglia said, quoting the legendary Valentino Garavani, “women want to be beautiful.” She’ll have all of their options covered.
25 September 2022
Being a fan ofEuphoria, Sara Battaglia wanted to inflect her pre-fall collection with a Gen Z vibe. That seems rather counterintuitive given her usually dramaticfemme fataletake on style. But tuning into young customers’ taste for magpie Y2K nostalgia is currently the industry m.o. for regenerating collections, eliciting new customer interest, and being in the now.Battaglia likes a shapely silhouette: tailored jackets with a cinched waist, full circle skirts, deceptively demure little black dresses that are actually quite sexy. Here she indulged in hybridizing her classics with contrasting interventions that, in her view, added a younger, unconventional vibe to her otherwise very femme look. A sartorial blazer was given puffy bomber sleeves gathered with bows; a circle-skirted, belted, hooded piumino coat was blown up to showstopper proportions; and a Dior-ish bar jacket was transformed into a “bra jacket,” with strategically-placed cut-outs barely conceiling the breasts. On the same note, a tent-like sleeveless black dress with a feathery fil coupé effect was designed to be a scene-stealer: “perfect for the theater, but if worn with a wool turtleneck its’a great look for the everyday,” Battaglia said. If everyday life is a theater, then she’s probably right.Embracing sustainability is one of Battaglia’s new commitments. Being a skillful bag designer, she has been trying to find alternatives to leather rather unsuccessfully for years. Now she has apparently solved the riddle; for pre-fall she presented a line of bags that have her signature accordion sides in rainbow colors, made from vegan leather sourced ethically through the Italian company Limonta. To the touch they have the same supple, smooth finish of the real thing. The offer includes a variety of quirky geometric shapes, which she described as looking “quite weird,” like a trapeze with an askew, jutting-out side; a pointy pyramid with cone-like hard handles; and a circular ovoid, very Space Age Pierre Cardin.
2 February 2022
Villa Bloc is a modernist house built in the 1950s by the Italian architect Vittoriano Viganó on the shores of Lake Garda in northern Italy. Sara Battaglia was drawn to its spare, rigorous lines as a contrasting backdrop to her collection’s rather dramatic style.For Spring, Battaglia wanted to convey a feeling of joy and optimism for the future. Who doesn’t? “It’s like exhaling a breath of relief,” she said. “I wanted to represent a mix of positive emotions, like a good cocktail, a whirlwind of uplifting colors and shapes. There should be some fun and euphoria in our wardrobes.” Playing on opposites always helps to simplify the narrative; here, Battaglia used rich, textured fabrics to elevate sporty shapes and gave impactful volumes a streamlined twist. A Pucci-esque kaleidoscopic print graced an entrance-making, tentlike tunic as well as Lycra leggings worn with boxer shorts and a matching hoodie. “Even if it’s a simple sweatshirt, I’ve extended the hoodie into a cape, a bit 17th century,” she said. Other bold statements included high-waisted dark denim pants with extra-wide plissé legs and a tunic and palazzo pants in sequined fil coupe with fluffy feather trimmings. Pieces definitely not for the faint of heart.Also new: a monogrammed logo offering in stretchy jacquard, proposed on a shirt and cropped-legging combo and on a circle-skirted, zippered, and belted coat dress in a bright azure hue. In Italian,battagliameans battle. “Using just my family name and not my first name was intended as a quite ironic take on the logo,” she explained. “I wanted to encourage fighting for fashion, for good humor, for positivity. As women, our battles never end.”
14 July 2021
Sara Battaglia called her fall collection Youth. “I was thinking not only about the enthusiasm, beauty, and energy that youth is obviously about,” she said on the phone. “What interested me most was to emphasize how, when you’re young, you’re given the possibility of making mistakes and to rebel against rules and constrictions almost as a creative act of self-expression.” It was a mindset not surprisingly suggested by the many restrictions we face these days. And breaking free of limitations is surely very tempting—not just for young people.Translating this rebellious mood into her collection meant smoothing a certain formality in favor of a slightly more playful mode. To that end, she experimented with styling, mainly by disassembling her tailored pantsuits. She paired the jacket with tight leggings, which were in turn worn “wrongly,” as she put it, under hot pants or short Bermudas. Classic high-waisted pants were also cut “wrongly” into a quiltedpiuminofabric, rather than in more classic materials like wool or tweed.These supposed mistakes didn’t look so awfully “wrong”—we’ve surely seen worse examples of bad taste in fashion, not to mention true rule-breaking experimentation. In fact, her cape jackets, long quilted cinched coats, double-breasted city coats, and sweeping overcoats had a rather bourgeois vibe about them. And the evening looks—short black dress-capes worn over bare legs or long draped numbers—were actually quite diva-esque dramatic. Battaglia’s collection was inherently glamorous; there’s nothing particularly “wrong” with that.
2 February 2021
Quarantine pushed some designers into DIY mode—think Valentino’s Pierpaolo Piccioli and Louis Vuitton’s Nicolas Ghesquière, who both took to the camera and lensed their advertising campaigns or lookbooks themselves. Sara Battaglia joined the illustrious bandwagon of amateur photographers, embracing the challenge of shooting her own resort collection. Entrusting a model friend, with no help from a makeup artist and no hairdresser in tow (and no post-prod retouching, as she proudly pointed out), she decamped to Forte dei Marmi, a swanky Italian resort famous for its rainbow-colored beachside cabanas. “After the restrictions of the confinement, I wanted to give free rein to my joie de vivre,” she said on the phone. Who can blame her?Battaglia’s style comes with an ingrained dose of flash—not even the strictest quarantine could tone it down. The allover Pucci-esque swirling print she designed for the collection (she called it “a dancing, smiling motif”) looked rather statement-making. Only a very self-confident post-lockdown creature, eager to resume flying the glamour banner, would have the nerve to negotiate a sandy beach wearing high-heels and a head-to-toe matching ensemble—a pair of skirt/shorts, an hourglass-y blazer, leggings, and a huge floppy hat, all curlicue-printed in a bright shade of emerald green. No question of going unnoticed wearing it—but after months of isolation, a little peacocking should actually do no harm, right?On a more subdued note, roomy poplin caftans, poet-sleeved cady blouses paired with palazzo pants, frilly lace babydolls, and cinched-waisted bustier sundresses (paired with comfy flats) looked suitable enough for the easy, relaxed beach life that owners of not-so-statuesque bodies and with no particular diva-esque proclivities can enjoy. Yet Battaglia can’t help loving a bit of theatrics; for her, there’s apparently a dormant movie star in each one of us, ready to be awakened.
3 August 2020
Sara Battaglia’s fall lookbook was shot in Milan. Milanese women are famously busy and efficient—they apparently don’t have much time to fuss about fashion. Or at least this is what they want you to believe. Yet they’re naturally stylish, elevating practicality to a chic status and seduction to a subtle art of not revealing too much, or at least not immediately.This is an attitude shared by Battaglia; her take on fashion is part practicality, part glamour. Her choice of Milan as the backdrop to her fall collection made sense, yet it could’ve been any other city in the world: Her woman was photographed spending a busy day, from the nursery to the boardroom to an evening at La Scala, not forgetting the gym, running errands, and an aperitivo with her girlfriends. One gets tired even describing it—but we’re all in the same boat. Battaglia is lending a hand with her efficiently glamorous, seductively practical fall collection, which she described as “daywear-focused, seasonless, and occasionless.”Battaglia presents her style as pragmatic and tailored to the needs of a down-to-earth, businesslike lifestyle, but she can’t help but inject flash and impact into her daywear propositions. Not-so-masculine pantsuits came in bold primary colors that scream “look at me”; being boardroom-ready for her means wearing a caramel-colored scalloped miniskirt and laced-up thigh-high boots. Fancy a shopping spree? A head-turning ruby pantsuit exposing bare skin through sliced sleeves and pants would do. And why not drop the baby off while wearing a tight-tight pencil skirt with a round-edged slit on the side, a pussy-bow blouse, and high heels, legs veiled by black sheer stockings? And when you’re late running like crazy from one meeting to another, a flame red trapeze minidress with suede high-heeled thigh-high boots will surely stop traffic for you. Even a Milanese tram will come to a halt to let you cross the street, and you’ll be at your destination on time.
24 February 2020