With his SS22 Gaetano Colucci carries us into his personal, spontaneous, and idyllic world. Escapism is part of his own identity as a young man on the threshold of adulthood as it is of Ardusse, his narrative opus in the form of clothing.
Escape from reality and self-portrait intertwines in Ardusse’s third idyll, the closest to the author’s feelings and at the same time the furthest from the classical world: a self-portrait in pastel tones and silky shimmers entitled Virtual Arcadia.
The Ardusse pictorial roots and bucolic hints stay, but the narration takes on the adventurous and heroic features, the fantasy and metamorphic contours of a video game, which is the first Arcadia Gaetano Colucci delved in, prolongedly and repeatedly, as a gamer. Gamer and character are the two personas meeting in a virtual fantasy, different personifications of gentle dudes moving against the backdrop of a digital Arcadia. They wear soft armors, outward extensions of their sturdy delicacy: neatly designed parkas and overcoats; jackets with asymmetrical collars and unexpected openings; protective or fluid shirts; crumpled satin shorts and tank tops; tailored Bermuda shorts.
Knitted vests and cardigans express a need for dreamy domesticity. Hidden in the linings, the gentle dudes of Ardusse become a narrative print drawn in fluid traits by Roberto Maria Lino.
Misty and evanescent, a delicate but tenacious kind of masculinity materializes in a palette of watery and dreamlike tones. Arcadia is evoked and reiterated as the essence of Ardusse: a fantasy place and yet an existing one, like a video game, played by entire generations. It is a new idyll, more concrete than the previous ones, infinitely escapist, innocent.
