Upside Down. I fell in love with the artworks of Andrea Collesano 7 years ago: they were exhibited in the Art Gallery of Barbara Paci in Pietrasanta. It was love at first sight because when I was a child I was obsessed by whales and sea bottoms; i used to draw many, many of them… however, I wouldn’t be able to become an Artist! Collesano, instead, is an Artist. He’s still very young, he lives and works in Forte dei Marmi in a house-laboratory with a very wild garden. And with a cat. In spite of his youth, he’s already known internationally. He transfers his imaginary world and its symbolisms in his artworks, made with ink on aged paper. Whales are his passion but he also draws lots of other animals. And palm trees. Palm trees underwater, surrounded by frogs and seahorses, in a surreal, charming and poetic world, with a gentle hand; a world that turns upside down the biological rules of animal and vegetal life. Next step: sculptures. Made of bronze. I went and visit him and I saw them: and I fell in love again.

The man and the sea. The marinière was born in 1858, when it was included in the official uniform of the French Navy. It has also another name: “breton”, related to Brittany, where it was worn for the first time by fishermen. And the fishermen of Deauville, Normandy, gave Coco Chanel the idea of her striped sweater with the boat neck: but this is certainly a men’s garment. The marinière refers to a maritime atmosphere and it’s usually reintroduced in s/s collections but, if the knitting is thick, it could also work for the f/w season. From the 50s on, the breton has gone round the world: from Sartre to James Dean, to Cary Grant (in To Catch a Thief), and in the 80s appeared on the catwalk thanks to Jean Paul Gaultier, that Pierre et Gilles portrayed with imaginative irony. Jean Paul Gaultier in a famous picture by Pierre et Giles (1990).