Antonio Berardi is a young designer with a British-Italian background and Central Saint Martins College of Art Design credentials. After briefly showing as a recent graduate in the late Nineties, he vanished from the London fashion scene only to reappear in Milan. No wonder the Italians embraced his hybrid sensibility: he loves girls in eveningwear dressed to the max and never holds back.
Berardi s southern Italian roots show in his affinity for decoration, and his London upbringing in his taste for tougher, punk-influenced styling. For Fall 2002, he used patterned leather made to look like fabric, in swing-skirted dresses with corseted torsos emphasized with multiple studded belts. Berardi revved up white tailoring and black jersey with bondage straps bristling with silver hardware, and wasn t afraid to send out a pant suit in bubble-gum pink lace and leather. With his asymmetric chiffon dresses and loudly patterned lace-and-bead-encrusted boots, the designer s bravado performance was very much in the vein of John Galliano s work at Dior. For next season, he has signed a deal with Gibo which offers him the chance to develop a more personal signature.
