Giampietro Baudo and Stefano Roncato, Editor in Chief and fashion director of MFF, describe the next SS10 Costume National collection.

“ With these portraits I have defined a rock iconography where art and nature communicate emotions and allusions through a strong and contemporary language”. Ennio Capasa

The SS2010 Collection merges rock culture and its never-ending evolutions with nature’s most instinctive and primitive side.
 

“ I was not looking for inspirations but for landmarks and I found them in Patti Smith’s passion and poetry and in Keith Richards’ primordial rock”.

The portraits create a pattern of metaphors and allusions, past and future that can be perceived as a Manifesto where the characters are Karmen Pedaru, Christian Brylle and nature’s symbols: a columbine, expression of freedom and awareness, and a horn, representing strength and manhood.
 

Glen Lunchford is the photographer, maestro in capturing the contemporary essence and outrightness.
 

 
“I chose AMREF because they do not talk about problems but fight them, they do not talk about rights but defend them.” Ennio Capasa

This year we will celebrate Christmas again by supporting a cause that is dear to many of us.
The budget traditionally reserved for Christmas gifts will be donated to AMREF for the Water project.
With the help of CoSTUME NATIONAL, a well will be built in Kenya that will provide access to clean water to more than a thousand people.

Ennio Capasa, always sensitive to projects related to the environmental protection, chooses to make an act of solidarity to communicate to people close to him the importance of a concrete social responsibility.
AMREF, the leading health organization in East Africa, ensures economic and human development of African people alongside whom work. It seeks long-term solutions for the problems of Africa because, the benefits of the interventions last no longer than one season.
AMREF is developing a water project in five districts of Kenya with the aim to bring clean water to a hundred of thousand families by the end of 2011.

Sync this event in your phone and organizer now! The Glasshouse in Milan’s via Fusetti for the official presentation of CoSTUME NATIONAL and C’N’C’s new PE2010 press campaign.

On one hand the new campaign harks back to an imaginary world inspired by NATURE and PROGRESSIVE ROCK with photographs by Glen Lunchford for CoSTUME NATIONAL – portraits that come together to compose a manifesto of metaphors and allusions, memory and future times in which the main players are Karmen Pedaru, Christian Brylle and some key symbols of nature: the Dove, freedom and conscience, the Horn, strength and virility.

On the other, we have California sunshine and the children of Rock’n’Roll. Kids who have rediscovered their commitment to a better world without losing track of the need to have fun – just like their parents but with more poetry. Key players are Theodora Richards, daughter of legendary Keith and Maxwell Kamins, son of the record producer and ex-leader of The Electra Mark, photographed by Dan Martensen.

Have a look to all the pics here.

Lissen some tracks of the new album
 

• The Garden
• Boomerang
• Chick a Boom

“The harmony between natural and rare elements creates an original, sensual and charming fragrance, for an essential and timeless man”. Ennio Capasa

You are invited to the official preview of the men’s new perfume CoSTUME NATIONAL HOMME which takes place from 28th October to 2nd November. Come and try it!

A declaration of true love: Milan Loves Fashion!

Mark down this date: 24 September at 8.15 pm and a world-famous venue – Piazza Duomo in downtown Milan!

C’n’C Costume National will be celebrating Milan Fashion Week with a spectacular event staged with Milan City Council.

Objective: To kick off Fashion Week with a night dedicated to fashion – and specifically C’N’C fashion with the latest collections. There’s dance with the fabulous Eleonora Abbagnato and of course music with The Kills and Kruder & Dorfmeister plus a fabulous show by Fanfare Le Snob. The event will be coordinated and directed by Marco Balich.

This amazing metropolitan happening is open to everyone so come and help us celebrate the deep-rooted connection that unites Fashion to Lombardy’s capital. The idea is the fruit of a common vision shared by Ennio Capasa, creative director of C’N’C Costume National and Giovanni Terzi, Milan City’s Councillor responsible for Fashion, Design and City Events.

If Milan loves Fashion, Fashion certainly loves Milan.

“My aim is to support and promote the fashion sector by opening up spaces and venues and creating opportunities to bring Fashion closer to the Public without compromising in any way Fashion’s key elements of style and charm,” says Giovanni Terzi. For the first time ever – thanks to Costume National – we will stage an open-air event to trumpet the allure of the fashion parade in the context of a mega-show. This will be located before an iconic backdrop, a frame of considerable emotional impact. Everyone is welcome”.

All in all a most democratic way of presenting a project that’s worth sharing.

“I am proud to be the first ever to bring this new way of communicating fashion to the Piazza. And I hope this event will mark the start of an exciting, new approach.” Ennio Capasa is enthusiastic. “Open, dynamic and involving,” he comments. “As a fashion designer and a Milan citizen by adoption, I felt the time had come to take charge and launch a new way of getting my work’s message across in a style that’s slightly less self-focused.
And today I want to share my creations as much as I can with Milan, the city I have come to choose as my own.”

Milan loves fashion
Piazza Duomo, 24 September 9.15 pm

Photographer: Glen Luchford
Models: Diana Dondhoe (IMG) e Martin (Elite)
 

A conversation between Ennio Capasa and Fabio Novembre about fashion and design

The cross-contaminations of fashion, design and the web: how do they influence each other, how do they evolve and how are markets and brand positions changing? How do you emerge in the internet age, what different kinds of training and backgrounds are best these days and what new scenarios does the net offer? All these topics and more came under the spotlight at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy in Rimini, Italy (part of Bologna University) in the company of top stylist Ennio Capasa and designer Fabio Novembre. Both were guests of fashion journalist Gianluca Lo Vetro. The two creatives spoke a lot about a new phenomenon known as Mod-esign – the juxtaposition of two quite similar worlds notwithstanding decidedly different time-scales: fashionwear gets planned fast and evolves rapidly as it changes direction every six months while design is made to last years.

So are designers and fashion stylists so different? According to Capasa a creative works to breathe life into an icon making it a strongidentifiable viewpoint imbued with sign and language.
And this holds good whether the medium is fashiondesign architecture or interior decoration. So Stark’s lemon squeezer Chanel’s clothes and the Costume National style maintain the same intensity and force year after year.
Instead the real difference is in seduction.
“Design has a less violent and erotic form of seduction than fashion which by definition has to go out and shake people as it touches an almost hormonal part of us. That’s also why
people continue to buy it” says Capasa.

However if design is thought of as being non-sensual we need to be careful
not to over-generalise.
In this sense Novembre’s works open up an interesting debate.
Often called the most erotic of designers by the presshe declares: “Creating is a process
that starts from nudity through to dressing with the designer enjoying each
phase in a kind of strip-tease. Probably till today products have not been particularly evocative because the designers interpreting them weren’t sexy enough! I feed off eroticism and my way of designing is drenched in it!”

One main theme of the debate is the relationship fashion and design have
with the web. Ennio Capasa is a leading beacon in the fashion world – also because of his relationship with the web.
He explains that thanks to the internet it’s increasingly the final user rather than the journalist who is responsible for giving the final judgement on a fashion product – even if the system is still excessively drugged by advertising investments for this statement to be completely true.
“Today we’re in a new era in which the economy is evolving to the detriment of general products and to the benefit of true ideas and experiments.
There’s a yearning for newinnovative products with soul and identity”.
 
 

Costume National indeed has to thank the internet for overtaking a colussus such as Chanel in the number of i-phone application downloads (CN is now positioned third in the segment for world fashion) and for winning second place in the New York Webby Awards – the Internet Oscars – with its cnc-costumenational.com website.

There’s an analogous process is the world of design which is seeking informationnews and inspiration from the net and above all from blogs: the real source of information today in which everyone can make their own voice heard.

There are opposing views when it comes to the subject of teaching and the distinction between subjects and disciplines. Novembre who has a more liberal approach to teaching and training says today’s universities are useless and that their true power is found in the opportunity they give young people to compare and confront themselves with others – impossible to do with facebook! He says he prefers people to have a single direction in his own field: “If you work as a designer you have to go on doing that to have the same force of ideas and communication.” Capasa sees it differently. He says university is more important than ever for raising the population’s general level of culture. He ends by imparting some words of advice to all students: “Be sure to favour an interdisciplinary approach over American-style hyper-specialization – in other words feel free to move and create between fashiondesigngraphics and architecture so that you can again take possession of that special characteristic of Italian genius that coloured the Renaissance.”