Lucio Vanotti

Sign, matter, surface are the variables of Lucio Vanotti’s work. Purism, reductionism, concision are the instruments he uses. The expression is crystal-clear: fast, efficient, anti-romantic just like a mathematical formula. Intended as a daily object, the item of clothing is reduced to its basic form: extreme to the point of abstraction, yet easy to use. Perfect simplicity, being the result of a long editing process, captures tensions and energy without turmoil being visible on the surface. By removing all that is superfluous, the designer subtracts each piece to the meaningless flux of seasonal change, offering the customer with something personal, but also with a new awareness. The choice of semi-artisanal production carried entirely in Italy, in this sense, is a necessary consequence more than a programmatic manifesto. The collection is a repertoire of possibilities: rational pieces for men and for women, a few completely interchangeable, are conceived to be arranged and rearranged in individual compositions. The form-function theorem is solved fusing beauty and utility and avoiding ornamentation. What is not there, what has been edited away, is more important than what has been left. A clear, precise sense of suspension dominates: what really matters is the grain of the fabric, in its untouched pureness; absolute geometries become alive around the body, in a constant short-circuit between the second and third dimension; the seams and darts that define an item’s structure turn into a dry form of embellishment. Nothing else needed.