His vision is fairly singular, much like McQueen. While promoting his Fall Winter '23 collection entitled "Queer Symphony," he said, "It’s mainly related to this idea that everything I was ashamed of as a kid is now my strength. Up until I was 17, I would literally pray every night to wake up straight, and pray to be normal. And every single day, I was bullied in school, when I didn’t even know who I was." It is a shared story among many of us in the gay community, one I have heard many times...surviving emotional, psychological, and often physical abuse to emerge on the other side, despite or probably because of it all, with a hunger and drive to create something beautiful, to express a force that could not be taken from us. I can attest to the truth of this from my own personal experience. So I feel great tenderness toward and interest in the creations of Paolo Carzana.
His sartorial vernacular is made of delicate fabrics tied and stitched together that seem like creations from some dream world, as if those wearing his garments should be lounging around on marble terraces in bright Pre-Raphaelite splendor, or in a lush production of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." There is a hushed beauty to the silhouettes and construction of the garments that casts a spell. And while this Fall-Winter '24-'25 collection might have originated in a dark place, it is still this other, brighter world he strives toward. "It’s very much sort of journeying through the darkness, passing through the storm, up through the clouds, and onto the top where the light shines. I’ve called the collection 'Melanchronic Mountain.' Everyone around is feeling a lot in this moment, the way the world is. It's this feeling I have that it’s so hard to try and be positive, but we can. It’s within the bones that we carry, how we can transform that pain into hope."
I like that sustainability is important to Carzana: he is committed to using deadstock or recycled fabric, and he uses plant dyes and spices to color his fabrics, including introducing sappanwood reds and black walnut browns in this collection. But here is what I truly love: his cuts feel like they are memories of historical clothing, like tattered remnants of a far-away homeland after a shipwreck, and his beautiful sheer, ripped, ruched tops and trousers seem like they belong on wood sprites, elves, fairies. Or just those who wish to live in a softer, gentler world.
https://www.paolocarzana.com/
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