COLLINI MILANO “Adapt and Prevail”

COLLINI MILANO “Adapt and Prevail”

COLLINI MILANO is a heritage brand of the historic Milanese elite. An original representative of the Made in Italy legacy, for decades it was synonymous with extreme glamour and elegance.

With the arrival of new owner Carmine Rotondaro, COLLINI is being transformed while remaining true to its origins. The brand returns to the spotlight by continuing to express its heritage in haute couture fur, but now, upcycles and reinvents this offering while unveiling new ready to wear pieces for men and women, that project the glamourous COLLINI spirit to a global platform. 

Carmine Rotondaro is knowingly daring with the Collini label and freely applies his particular fashion vision to the brand’s development, a vision honed through his illustrious career advising for leading global luxury groups. The new Collini campaign reflects his point of view, often provocative and counter-current, but respectful of the origins of the brand and its history.

Images of domestic life, apparently familiar but with a shocking element, the model dons a gas mask while going about her homebound day.

According to Rotondaro, The Covid-19 emergency has created a strong compression and mix of different aspects of life into one single small operating space: at home. It has also created a compression and mix of feelings and emotions very different from each other: the fear of the virus and the comfort of life at home far away from the stress of travel, appointments, deadlines. A striking model represents beauty and glamour while the gas mask she wears symbolizes fear and alarm, strongly contrasting elements surrounded by the common stage of everyone’s life over the past few months: the mundane details of everyday domestic activities like cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping and more. 

Adaptation is key, the unthinkable (wearing a glamorous dress and a gas mask while grocery shopping) can be confronted, managed and surpassed. This is the lesson of Corona Virus, that humans are utterly adaptable and unstoppable even in the most distressing situations. 

Quote from Carmine Rotondaro

The outcome that I was striving for with this campaign was not at all to provoke or protest but to create strong and meaningful images that symbolize the resilience of the human spirit even in the most grotesque and unimaginable circumstances. My message is that we can pull it off, we can get over this dark, horrific experience that has compressed and confused all aspects of our lives within the four walls of our home. COOLER THAN LOCKDOWN.

Collini Milano @collinimilano :: https://collinimilano.com

Photography:: Zhili Xue