ATXV, based in Milan, is a small jewel of a brand founded and designed by Antonio Tarantini that won a 2021 Vogue Italia Who Is on Next? Prize and this season was picked to show at RUN, a showroom for emerging talents in Paris organized by ANDAM Fashion and WSN, where hopefully the line will get some of the attention it deserves—and not just because Charli XCX wore it recently.
While the label falls into the “emerging” category, Tarantini is a seasoned designer who went solo in order, he said on a call, “to have the possibility to express myself.” His main subjects are the body and textiles. The latter he manipulates by hand, pulling and twisting and wrapping his materials in ingenious and gestural ways to create not-so-classical drapes for body-proud women. Though Tarantini makes use of transparency and cutouts, these are not “naked” dresses; he uses fabric as a second skin. “I really like to create and play with the material because I think when you go in a shop, or when you touch a piece, this really makes a difference,” he said.
A photograph of a full moon illuminating clouds inspired the fabric in the opening look, a chemise with a slightly dropped waist and raw-cut sleeves. Rather than make a print, Tarantini captured that nebulous scene with a shibori-dyed material. The skirt in Look 15 was made of velvet so fine it had an airy transparency. It was shown with a cashmere-cotton double T-shirt underneath, with a delicate nylon lace bra over it. Tarantini has a knack for making (body)-confident clothes out of the most ethereal materials. The result is a kind of “perverse luxury,” he said.
Tarantini was in a sort of emo mood this season. “I was a little bit darker,” he said. But as a self-described “wintry person with a summery heart,” angst wasn’t part of the narrative; rather, this collection was an exploration of the sometimes decadent “sense of freedom in the night, in the dark, that I really like,” the designer said.
Tarantini made his first outerwear piece for ATXV: an oversized jacket. He imagined it as something a woman would mistakenly grab and put on while leaving a club. There was one in an oil-black painted leather, and a heavy cotton number in smoky gray with a white lining, a symbolic representation, said Tarantini, of night and day, respectively. He described the proportion of those jackets as being “completely wrong” in a bad-meaning-good way. “Because I’m coming from Dior, from Versace, from Dolce Gabbana, I learned how to create a beautiful piece for a woman or for a man, but now I really like to make mistakes,” he said. By “mistakes” he meant doing something such as cutting a shadow-like techno jersey pullover top asymmetrically so that the neckline drapes in an unexpected way. An unforeseen element in this offering was Tarantini’s use of metal rings. Fabric was suspended or passed through them, sometimes wrapped or knotted. He said he found in the circle both a symbol of perfection and protection—much like he finds in his nonna’s ring, which he wears like a talisman.
