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Romeo Gigli, at 36 the most established of the young comers (annual sales of $12 million, up from $5 million last year), did not have to look so far afield for his inspiration. His sundried colors, the monastic grace of his tailoring, are a direct reflection of the Japanese design innovation of the past decade, especially the work of the formidable Rei Kawakubo. Gigli has simplified and styled down many of Kawakubo's more cerebral inventions for her Comme des Garcons line, added a dash of Milanese insouciance and found himself among the hottest designers in the marketplace since his first show in March 1982. Gigli, who dislikes being photographed, firmly resists intimations of Japanese influence. When he remarks, however, that "my clothes have no shape when they're on the hanger, but they take on shape when they're worn," there are distinct echoes of the Eastern precept that the shape of a garment comes from the wearer's body and is not imposed upon it.
Gigli's eye, whatever it is checking out, is distinctly on target. If his label gives potential pronunciation difficulty (Row-may-o Gee-lee would be a reasonably safe try), the clothes, once worn, are instantly understandable. They indulge the body, bestowing a kind of inward elegance that the designer says "begins with how a woman today moves, how she expresses herself. Women today value their freedom; they do not want to feel compressed or crushed by what they wear." Like Ozbek, Gigli also studied architecture, but he works from individual pieces, not a grand design. The usual fashion practice is to come up with a broad-based aesthetic for each collection. Gigli creates individual pieces -- a lovely evening dress of elasticized linen, for example, that hangs like an unpleated Fortuny -- and fits them into a whole. "Each piece I design has its own life," he says. "Then I assemble them. The clothes, to be strong, should be soft."
By that standard, a Gigli dress is positively brawny. Wearing one is like being brushed by cobwebs. His fashion has an urbane modernity that stands in stark contrast to the antiquity that enveloped him as he was growing up. Born in the soil-rich region of Romagna, Gigli was "surrounded by books" as a boy. His father and grandfather were antiquarian booksellers, and, the designer remembers, "We always lived in houses full of antique furniture and paintings -- beautiful but uncomfortable." His Milan studio, staffed with six associates, is unfussy; his apartment has lots of white space and green plants, and that is where he does most of his designing, "at night, when the telephone does not ring." He weekends at a getaway house near Portofino, where "I turn into a peasant," spending long hours in his garden. The simplicity and the earthy tones he likes may all come straight from there, even if the sun that nurtures them rises in the Far East.
. "People have to make happy clothes," Patrick Kelly says. "There's just too much sadness in the world." In fashion's fractional contribution to the Zeitgeist, he and Ozbek and Gigli have made nonchalance into a high craft, turned zest into a wearable commodity. Spirit does not have shape on a hanger either, but these are three young designers who cut it and fit it like fine fabric, then send it out to play.