Matteo Tamburini placed leather—and all its many guises—at the heart of Tod’s spring collection. Silhouettes remained pure and restrained, but Tod’s artisanal savoir faire turned simplicity into a display of bravura. “I wanted to evoke the languid, slightly nonchalant spirit of late summer,” said Tamburini. Nonchalance, however, was the last word one would use. The show was a virtuoso exercise in artful craftsmanship delivered with breezy finesse.
Graphic play was explored to give depth and visual appeal, with summer stripes taking center stage and worked with a variety of imaginative techniques. Regimental lines marched across seemingly classic cotton pieces that, on closer inspection, were crafted from applied leather: a nod to Tod’s leather mastery, reframed in a sharper, almost edgy language. The same wit extended to outerwear—a trench and a mackintosh were worn inside out, their hidden seams on display as bold graphic punctuation. Perforated Gommino surfaces were reimagined as tops, threaded with linen to build a richly textured rhythm. Cabans in supple caramel Pashmy leather bore the mark of hand-stitching—deliberately raw, like a craftsman’s gesture left visible. On the same highly skilled note, buttery-soft napa was made into square-cut skirts and handkerchief tops tied at the back as if in haste, pieced together from stripes of contrasting hues, hinting at Frank Stella’s palette of sun-kissed brights. For Tamburini, precision wears the mask of ease, and simplicity reads as artistry undercover.
