For designers, words matter

«Words are important!» warned Nanni Moretti in one of his unforgettable films: Palombella Rossa. They certainly are for Pierpaolo Piccioli, who to stage his vision of masculinity free of any socio-historical preconceptions borrowed the words of Hanya Yanagihara, American writer and journalist and author of the bestselling novel Una vita come tante. During the presentation of Narratives at La Statale in Milan, a structured black blazer reads «We are so old that we have become young again,» while the author of the quote smiles in the front row, admiring her own words on a haute couture garment. Because the revolution in sartorial codes according to Valentino also passes through words, a recurring element in the creations of stylists who throughout history have tried first to deconstruct and then reconstruct the idea of male identity through the Screen Print Suit, from Virgil Abloh to Martin Margiela, Junya Watanabe and Yohji Yamamoto.

Yohji Yamamoto FW21

Valentino SS24

Off White SS23

Louis Vuitton FW23

Louis Vuitton FW23

Yohji Yamamoto FW17

For Louis Vuitton's FW23, words were a precious tool for Colm Dillane and Ibrahim Kamara in their celebration of Virgil Abloh's artistic and cultural legacy. Structured outfits with playful prints, promising slogans such as 'bright vision' or 'fantastic future', a riot of colours: Abloh's tireless optimism lives on in a collection celebrating his legacy. In the same year, again Kamara (this time at Off-White™) explored the potential of the screen print suit by proposing on a denim blazer the print of a body subjected to X-rays. Going back twenty years, we discover that avant-garde fashion has always played with printed words, from the provocative slogans of Takahiro Miyashita's Number Nine grunge t-shirts to the poem jeans born from the collaboration between Levi's and Junya Watanabe. In the specific case of words printed on tailored blazers as a means of transcending gender categories, Yohji Yamamoto has always been a pioneer.

Martin Margiela SS99

Martin Margiela SS99

Junya Watanabe x Levi's SS10

Junya Watanabe x Levi's SS10

Martin Margiela SS99

«I think my men's clothes look as good on women as my women's clothes,» the influential Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto told the New York Times in 1983, "I always wonder who decided that there should be a difference in the clothing of men and women. "Forget me not" reads on a coat from SS04, the print "Will be back soon" peeps out instead in fw17, while for FW21 the writing multiplies and breaks up covering a two-piece suit, short, hermetic, winking or evasive phrases decorating strictly black genderless garments. Probably the first to present a screen printed suit, however, remains Martin Margiela, back in 1999. The spring-summer fashion show contained a sort of greatest hits: the trompe l'oeil prints referred to those presented for spring '96, the man-sized doll dresses were a reference to autumn '94 and the Stockman mannequin tops a reference to spring '97, to close the show a print running across the model's black blazer and bare chest: 'This suit is yours sir'.