Fabio Falcetta and Michele De Lucchi are the protagonists of the exhibition set up on the occasion of Pitti Immagine Uomo (13-16 June) at the Pitti Discovery Gallery in Florence in a ‘dialogue’ between architecture, design and lifestyles.
More than a collaboration, a true story of friendship: this is the bond between Fabio Falcetta and Michele De Lucchi, who in June will crown, in the setting of Pitti Immagine Uomo, 30 years of history in the world of fashion, design and architecture.
It was the 1990s, and Florence was establishing itself as the ‘cultural pole’ of fashion thanks to the development of the men’s industry and the other textile-clothing sectors, while at the same time in Milan and Rome, the fashion designers, the women’s industry and haute couture were consolidating.
Pitti Immagine had personally involved the ‘enlightened’ of the Italian entrepreneurial scene and the experts in the sector, communication and image: Marco Rivetti, Vittorio Rimbotti, Raffaello Napoleone, Mario Boselli, Agostino Poletto and Luigi Settembrini were soon to become the accomplices in a process of renewal of the trade fair model aimed at the internationalisation of the event. Fabio Falcetta and Michele de Lucchi also appeared in the flow of this cultural revolution.
It was 1993 and the two designers, for the first time, played on the same team. In the halls of the Fortezza da Basso, Fabio Falcetta presented his first collection, a small selection of outerwear made for Montedoro. The stand is designed together with his friend and colleague Michele De Lucchi, who at that time had already proven his talent.
“While designing Montedoro’s stand for Pitti in 1993, I got to know Michele better.
We were talking about book-shaped boxes containing my garments, arranged next to each other to form a bookcase, jackets and mackintoshes hung on a hook to enhance their lightness, refined and light lights like Michele’s to emphasise the hand, the patterns of the fabrics and the shapes of each garment“. Fabio Falcetta
A design and stylistic thought that has evolved over time, in a pas de deux between craftsmen of creativity, united by a passion for their ideas, expressed with a certain degree of flair and childlike inventiveness. Tying them together is an affinity of thought, simple and sophisticated at the same time, which is born, grows and is nurtured amidst the atmospheres of Lake Maggiore, in Angera, the place of the soul shared and loved, where they both reside and design, and where it is normal to feel creative, friendly, and deeply Angerian.
And precisely to honour the road they have travelled together, Fabio and Michele are returning to celebrate their three-decade-long conversation between fashion and design. An exhibition, a visual dialogue between crafts that will take place from 13 to 16 June, in the setting of the Discovery Gallery, not far from the Fortezza da Basso that has always been a stronghold of fashion shows on the world stage. Like a game board on which to amuse oneself, the tale unfolds within a cosy space at Via Faenza 111, with a retrospective that retraces the key stages of their respective productions, linking together a selection of iconic pieces: garments and objects capable of bursting into our everyday use with their aesthetic and functional strength.
“Luxury is not being able to buy something that costs a lot, but to possess what is difficult to have, for example youth. That is why I am happy when people tell me that one of my garments rejuvenates, slims down, that it makes the wearer look lighter. But luxury is also sharing a thought with a friend for thirty years, which translates into products and concepts for others; concepts born from the union of two professions: designing objects and designing clothes. Today we are still here talking about what has been and what is to come…” Fabio Falcetta
“Einstein said ‘Creativity is intelligence having fun’. Both Fabio and I do not pretend to have Einstein’s intelligence, but we still enjoy creating, inventing, surprising people with our ideas and thoughts, even if in different ways for our professions and aptitudes. We apply this to two worlds that may appear very distant but which in fact are very close because both project the present trying to imagine what is to come, what is not yet there, what is the future” Michele De Lucchi
Today, after 30 years, like a circle that closes, still at the Pitti, Fabio and Michele are together again, side by side, looking to the future…
Dialogo visivo tra mestieri: fashion designer e architetto
SHOW 13-16 JUNE 2023
9.30 AM – 6.00 PM
PITTI IMMAGINE UOMO 104
GALLERIA DISCOVERY
VIA FAENZA 111 FLORENCE
OPENING: 13 JUNE 2023 3.00 PM – 5.00 PM
