Couture Edition · Capitano Spavento
| Product number | 18.965 |
| Design | 1759/60 |
| Decor | Gareth Pugh, 2008 |
| Height | 19 cm |
“I feel the abstract way that the design shoots around Capitano, almost dominating the natural flow of line, is indicative of the way I work on my own collections.”
– Gareth Pugh
Gareth Pugh is currently perhaps the most fêted newcomer on the London fashion scene. In 2008 he started to exhibit in Paris, the stronghold of haute couture. His rapid rise to celebrity came with designs – mostly in black and white – that put the overall shape of the garment above that of the wearer. His garments may be inflatable or totally envelope the model, dissolving the natural volumes of the body and taking his designs into the realm of art. His design for the lovesick Capitano Spavento, who in his jealousy is ready to draw his dagger to protect his beloved Isabella from her beau, Octavio, is similarly radical. Pugh wraps the captain from top to toe in a severely geometrical black-and-white pattern. He wears a black star at waist level, from which angular lines radiate over his whole body.
The pattern, which comes from a fabric designed especially for his autumn 2008 pret-à-porter collection, is thus a citation of the artistic tradition of abstraction and its surprising applications. It is reminiscent of “dazzle” camouflage patterns applied to naval and passenger vessels during the two world wars, an idea derived from Vorticism, an English art style that developed from Cubism. There too the aim was to disguise shape, confuse perception, and muddle the observer’s sense of the object concealed beneath the pattern.
The linear pattern transforms Bustelli’s Capitano Spavento himself into an abstract. Yet the harshness of the decoration is subtly offset by the soft Rococo shapes of the porcelain figurine and the tiny irregularities in the hand-painted pattern. The “struggle between lightness and darkness,” which according to Gareth Pugh is central to his designs, is superbly realised in the all-over design of Capitano Spavento.
Individual figures are only available with Limit No. 16 – 25. It is not possible to order specific numbers. The figures will be supplied with a certificate in a gift box specially designed for the collection.
