This week we attempt an impossible mission. We’ll try to put together two opposite styles, but with music in common. The cover of the LP by Fabrizio De Andrè and PFM, of 1979, that I found in the book Pop life: a life on the cover by the art director Luciano Tallarini, recalls the pictures by Hedi Slimane. Not for the technique – Slimane’s black&white is very defined and the lights are sharp – but the guitar and the “raw” set make us think about his shoots dedicated to pop-rock stars. Our try is to mix, through menswear, the radical mood belonging to both categories: the aggressive one, from the leather rock world, with the softer and anticonformistic one, from the 70s songwriters, from De Andrè to James Taylor. The coexistence gives birth to a new outcome that redefines these getups placing them in a more modern setting. The cover of “In concert”, album by Fabrizio De Andrè with Premiata Forneria Marconi (1979).

 Black returns. Total black has been celebrated by many designers such as Prada, Costume National, Dolce&Gabbana, Armani and Helmut Lang. In particular, french brands have glorified it, from Stefano Pilati, when he was creative director for Yves Saint Laurent, to Dior Homme, Louis Vuitton, Hermès and Jean Paul Gaultier. And what about the far away 80s, when the cote dark-intellectual reigned, thanks to the japanese brands Comme des Garçons and Yohij Yamamoto. Today black is living a second life. Above all in leather, that “joins” fashion even sewn with wool, as the case of Valentino. Black leather evokes a sport imagination linked to motorcycles’ world, but it celebrates firts of all an erotic idea: just think about the pictures by Robert Mapplethorpe. If black leather’s trend will become established, I’m sure that black will return in fabric and knitwear soon. I hope not in shirts.