Fausto Puglisi, Designer and Creative Director: For me to be proud to be Italian means to go out, to discover new things. I’m proud to be Italian, but to be Italian in Milan now as a young designer, I have to be very honest, I have to thank myself, I have to thank my strength. I have to be strong, I have to be like a caterpillar. It’s like a military job at the end, fashion is like a military job. You dream but at the end of the day you fight. So it’s not that easy but I say the power of beauty, the power of dream, the power of doing beautiful things is something so strong in me that help me all day long.
So my design process starts from everywhere. There is not real defined process. I can start from a fabric, I can start from a vision, I can start from a movie, I can start from a sketch, I can start from music, I can start an enthusiasm. All--, every single piece I design is a dream for me. So there is not for me a real coherence, I’m not coherent at all when I design something. At the end I can say I can start from emotion, it’s all about emotion.
So I can’t live without my artisans, I trust too much in Italian art and craft. They are angels for me, they are not human, The craftsmanship in Italy is something which is extremely connected to the society. It’s something that people, at the end of the day, don’t do just for money, they do because they love it.
I travel all of Italy to find the best. Tuscany is the place where you can find the best leather ever. You have incredible workers treating the leather like silk, and this is something amazing. It’s all about story really.
For the last collection I was thinking about a fetish club in Berlin meeting Grace Kelly in Miami Beach, and it was a big crash. So I found these incredible S&M fetish bras in Berlin, but they were so hard, they were so heavy, so I wanted to change completely. I went to my saddler maker in Tuscany and we did it like butter, they were butter, they were so beautiful, they were so delicate at the same time and I like this contrast. And this is something that just Italian artisans can do. Beauty is something that just Italian artisans can handle.
I trust so much in Italian art and craft. That is something I like to do. I can never accept to do something out of Italy. I believe so much in sacrifice in fashion. Rome wasn’t built in a day and that’s for me the same thing. I mean a dress is not built in a day. A dress needs to be fitted, a dress needs to be sewed, a dress needs to be amazing. And if we think about the big names in fashion we think about sacrifice. Sacrifice means that fashion is your obsession and fashion is the only girlfriend and boyfriend you can have in life. Fashion is the only obsession, there is nothing else than fashion.