MILAN — After more than 10 years in the fashion business with his namesake brand, Marco De Vincenzo felt that there was enough material to tell a different story.
The designer is issuing a 130-page coffee-table book published by Electa that retraces his career, spotlighting styles that didn’t make the cut of his fashion shows and presentations. It’s aptly called “Mondovisione,” which translates into “Worldwide Broadcast.”
This marks a return to the limelight for De Vincenzo, who last April bought back his namesake brand from his former partners LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton and MMGP Srl, a company that also controls Cieffe Milano, the manufacturing firm that used to produce the Marco de Vincenzo collections. LVMH, which invested in the brand in 2014, had a 45 percent stake, while MMGP Srl controlled 35 percent of the company.
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Speaking over the phone from Rome, where he’s based, De Vincenzo said he’s prepping a return to showing collections under his own brand “getting back into the game as an independent designer,” which he was when he jump-started his label in 2009. His last fashion show was in February 2020.
Although he kept details of his comeback under wraps, De Vincenzo teased that the new collection might bow in February and will embed “a different approach, marked by the transformation of my codes and history.”
In the meantime, he has capitalized on the untold story of his brand with the new book, which is being released over the next month and features images of looks from seasons past styled according to a contemporary flair by matching items from spring and fall collections.
The idea came during lockdown when his company underwent a restructuring and he could buy back his own archive, filled with clothing that no one ever saw.
“They never saw the spotlight.…I fell in love with the idea that they were the ‘outcasts.’ I was the one who killed them, and I also had less familiarity with them,” De Vincenzo said.
He contended that the book is not a celebratory project, but rather a very personal way to tell a different story, more nuanced perhaps, of his own fashion lexicon, with items that don’t scream De Vincenzo as his signature rainbow-colored frocks but are equally meaningful to him.
He also offered that there’s an upcycling component to the project in that the archive pieces are getting a new life by way of the tome.
“It’s by all means a new collection somehow,” the designer said, hinting that a selection of the pieces might be manufactured and sold at some point.
The book features a preface by De Vincenzo’s school mate and rising Italian novelist Nadia Terranova, who contributed with her outsider’s view in describing the designer’s ethos.
“There’s much more creativity and many more projects in each fashion brand than what we come to see with a show,” and the book is a celebration of that, he concurred.