What thoughts would go through your head if you arrived at a work dinner, scanned the place cards, and saw that you were seated next to Sofia Coppola or Richie Tenenbaum? That was the surprise awaiting a small group of editors in Milan last week. It’s a scenario that exists outside the bounds of possibility (for starters, Richie is a fictional character), but not of the imagination of Lessico Familiare, an Italian brand you might not have heard of. Founded during the pandemic by Riccardo Scaburri, Alice Curti, and Alberto Petillo, the brand adapted its name from a 1963 book by Natalia Ginzburg, Lessico Famigliare, that documented everyday life in Italy between 1920 and 1950. Similarly, everything LF does is very close to home and based on what already exists, using upcycled materials, many of them interior textiles. This trio defines luxury as something unique and handmade, and all of their pieces are one-offs.
Small indie off-schedule brands are rare in Italy’s industrial and sophisticated fashion center, and the LF team is persevering like a flower growing through a crack in concrete. This season they’ve been lent a hand by kindred iconoclastic spirits, Sunnei’s Simone Rizzo and Loris Messina, who issued the following statement: “When everything is done to get something back, Sunnei dedicates itself to Lessico Familiare with the sole desire to see a young reality in Milan manage to focus on its potential. In a gesture that goes beyond talk, Sunnei opens the doors of its own HQ—both physically and metaphorically—to welcome the presentation of the new collection, whose purity has instead been maintained without any Sunneian contamination.”
Sunnei was hands-off, but irony and camp left their marks on the lineup, which riffs on an artwork that hung in Scaburri’s aunt’s house, a spoof on Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper in which pop culture icons were subbed in for Jesus and his disciples. From that, Scaburri came up with his own list of dream dinner guests. It’s an eclectic group that includes Nina Simone, Martin Luther, Sofia Coppola, and Cecilia Lisbon (a character from The Virgin Suicides). The LF team found favored images of each person and recreated their attire from them, using materials at hand. Mr. Darcy, for example, wears a McDonald’s uniform shirt that was treated to some embellishments, and the pink dress Gwyneth Paltrow wore for her Shakespeare in Love Oscar win was created using home textiles. In the process of moving, Scaburri found a treasure trove of materials, and he says that the “fil rouge” running through the collection is the curtain ruffles used on almost every look.
The collection examines how we consume culture in the postmodern digital world, and takes its title from the ubiquitous and vapid online response, “Literally me.” When Scaburri says it in the context of this collection, he really means it: “I have all these characters tattooed on my body,” he states.
“Basically, I was wondering, What can we do new? Nothing,” Scaburri writes. “I wanted to redo the garments of the icons that I like, that I read, that I watch; paying homage to them because they are part of me and Lessico.” He continues that thought on a call, saying that he’d like people to discover “the subtle irony in seeing things already done, but under a new point of view.” Counterintuitively, Lessico uses the seemingly familiar to point out the void. Scaburri says that the collection is a “subtle commentary on what I feel like is an emptiness, a lack of ideas, a lack of poetry, a lack of risk, also, in fashion. I don’t see any dreams in fashion, I feel like it became very flat in some way. Of course you have to sell, to pay attention to what is more wearable; you have to pay extreme attention to do the right thing, in the right moment. That’s why I wanted to do something already done…. We already have seen everything. [Here] is everything that I like the most.”
Lessico Familiare imagined that the violinist who played at the event had come from the Titanic. Scaburri entertained that this might be LF’s last chapter, but the team has changed course and will sail on ahead, charting new ways for us to look at fashion
Florence Welch, for the lungs.
Richie Tenenbaum, for waiting at the station.
Mary Parsons [a 17th-century American woman accused of witchcraft], so that it doesn’t happen again.
Luke Danes [from Gilmore Girls], for coffee.
Meryl Streep in Doubt.
Mr. Darcy [played by Colin Firth], for your stubbornness.
Seth Cohen [from The O.C.] (with spider man mask), for indie pride.
Natalia Ginzburg, for Family Lexicon.
Joan Didion, for the words.
Gwyneth Paltrow, for Goop.
Sofia Coppola, for the girls.
Lady Diana, for everything.
Lenny Belardo [Jude Law in The Young Pope], for vanity.
Cindy Sherman, for literally me.
Nina Simone, for Little Girl Blue.
Ginger Rogers, for the beat.
Martin Luther, for the reform.
Cecilia Lisbon, for her frankness.
