Nicolas Vi relice, became the greenest designer to recently collaborate with Jean Paul Gaultier, coinciding with the start of Gaultier’s guest collections project during the pandemic. Although he was just a child in Belgium when Madonna wore Gaultier’s iconic conical bra, the French designer left a lasting impression on him and many queer and diverse people around the world, representing Paris as a city of possibilities and celebration of diversity.
Di Felice’s collection tells the story of an arrival in Paris with covered gar-ments: jackets, long-sleeved dresses, long skirts and necklines that reach up to the face. As the parade progresses, garments gradually come off, revealing first the head, then the shoulders, and the hands are inserted into the gaps in the fabric in an erotic gesture. This transition is accompanied by a chromatic change from dark to light throughout the presentation.
Each look in the collection was inspired by an item from the Courrèges archive, but the unifying element was the use of brackets. Di Felice found a sample of fabric embroidered with hooks in the archive, which he used as a connective element for the rectangles and squares that make up the collection’s narrow, fitted shapes in soie gabardine, gazar and taffeta.
The designer highlighted the versatility of the hooks, allowing the user to adjust the level of exposure of the garments. This concept of adaptability manifested itself in a slip dress unbuttoned to the waist, revealing a sleeve-
less cape underneath decorated with stud-like hooks. A prominent example of this technique was a chainmail dress with 40,000 interconnected clasps, combining strength and fragility in a single piece.
