Get Shipwrecked With Blumarine SS23
Dissecting Nicola Brognano’s otherworldly take on y2k staples.
Under the reign of Nicola Brognano, we have seen Blumarine become the brand everyone’s wearing or wants to wear. The Italian fashion house has typically followed pink and pretty styles throughout its revival, even collaborating with Hello Kitty, but for this collection, things have taken a darker turn.
Gone was the trademark butterfly top, replaced with a studded denim crucifix and an array of dark-washed denim. Crucifixes were featured heavily throughout the show stringed up on ropey halter necks and mini dresses. Brognano wanted this collection to be “intriguing and sexier, less pop much dirtier”, this was definitely illustrated in the slinky silhouettes that cascaded like liquid down the curves and contours of the models on the runway. There was denim on denim on denim, something we’ve been seeing a lot recently at the likes of Diesel and Y/Project, in endless streams of belts, cargo trousers, and mini and maxi skirts.
Ethereal trains trailed along the sand-coated catwalk, where shells were scattered around and the room was bathed in light blue. In this Aquarium like landscape, it comes as no surprise that Brognano took inspiration from Disney classic ‘The Little Mermaid’, a film he was so obsessed with as a kid that the VHS got destroyed from being watched so much. The mutation from butterflies into a gothic marine creature is giving us more Ursula than Ariel as we see the brand shed its normal girly romanticism for a darker more sensual and erotic aesthetic. It’s not hard to see the references to ‘The Little Mermaid’ when we look at the collection, after all, there's a stunning oxidized shell-shaped bra, so maybe mermaids are the new butterfly? Only time will tell.
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