Review of Nº 21 Fall 2022 Fashion Show
Layer Up
By Mark Wittmer
Nº 21‘s Fall 2022 collection nailed a difficult balance of cohesion and imaginative eclecticism thanks to thoughtful and disciplined craft.
While creative director Alessandro Dell’Acqua’s signature sexiness – never overt, grotesque, or overly glamorized, but always emphatically body-positive in its reveling in the flesh – is certainly present here, it’s hidden under a few more layers than usual. Mining specific eras of dressing and schools of design – yet never being anything other than himself – he carefully layers sartorial strata to build up a rich aesthetic narrative. The designer also has a keen sensibility for material, and these principles made for some sensually tactile contrasts.
Wool jackets that suggested 40’s military and civilian tailoring treated with corsetry stitching techniques met slashed and shimmering party dresses; asymmetrical mohair sweaters with drawstring draping channeled Japanese deconstructionism.
Meanwhile, extravagant couture flourishes like beads and delicately embroidered lace peeked through, while rich leathers lent an occasional sense of dignified suppleness.
An impressive sense of cohesion was threaded throughout the collection despite the difficulty in pinning down a conceptual or aesthetic source.
“Another contributor to its eclecticism was the smart upcycling, most ingeniously present on the recycled fur coat that was embraced by a layer of sheer black tulle. “
Perhaps curiously clashing with that bulky and warm silhouette were vintage-Hawaiian-shirt-esque tropical foliage prints – which may have suggested a breeziness that felt out of place in a fall collection, were it not for their ghostly palette and impressive textural integration into the cohesive feeling of the collection as a whole.
There is certainly narrative to the collection as a whole, to the looks, and to the pieces – yet it’s rather difficult to say what that narrative is. But does it matter? The stories Dell’Acqua tells are abstract and out of time, yet stories nonetheless, written in a language of texture, contrast, and repositioned design codes.
This eclecticism and fluidity make him hard to pin down, and may have garnered accusations of inconsistency. Yet this collection in particular felt like a confirmation of the need for designers like these, those who can embody a distinctly modern moment of free expression, decentralization, and communal collaboration as a response to the world’s increasing feeling of chaos and control. As a final affirmation of this sense of freedom, the collection itself emphasized that its styling possibilities were endless, leaving it up to us to write the next story.