AZZI & OSTA HAUTE-COUTURE 2023: Between Light and Sea

Like a dream that would leave the memory of an enchantment upon awakening. You are swimming in clear water. In front of you, on an uninhabited island, stand the ruins of an ancient temple. The breeze scatters the echoes of a lyre. Faded music and ancient festivals come back to you.

Suddenly, in front of your eyes, dazzled by the glitter of the sun on the light movement of the waves, the stones come to life.

White marble under a cascade of pure gold, gray limestone that silver the salt crystals deposited by the wind on the columns entwined with tender ivy. The sea, iridescent with light, caresses this solitary shore with all its blues. Among the statues that time erases, a profusion of wildflowers blooming from thousand-year-old lines resurrects the forgotten gardens. The past that you contemplate becomes presence.

What if all this was secretly alive?

On the theme, so obvious in Haute Couture, of Greco-Roman antiquity, AZZI & OSTA propose this season a new variation.

A rigorous architectural work, applied to the structure of the models, reflects an offbeat bias.

Geometry and pure lines, sometimes heckled by a bubbling of tulle, reinterpret a statuary that is both hieratic and moving, rigid in appearance, fluid and supple to wear.

All in optical illusions, the work of textures imitates the bas-reliefs of the monuments or the rebel vegetation from which they emerge.

In the gazar, satin or crepe Georgette, declined in mineral or metallic shades, are dug the grooves of a column, or rounded, in frieze, cosmic eggs formed crocheted around wooden balls.

Here elements of toga, majestic capes, sensual drapes, airy pleats, are attached with fibulas or precious elements of passementerie. There, a powerful chain mail in mosaic of golden beads springs from a cascade of white gazar. The silver reflections of an entirely hand-sequined ensemble are an ode to the Moon and to Diana, divinity of the night.

The heavy braids of Caesar's epaulets, symbols of power, are contrasted with a transparent cape dotted with romantic golden bows. Streams of sequins illuminate the blue-night flow of a train.

Signature necklines blossom into column capitals.

Garlands of laurel rain down in cascades of satin on the bottom of a bacchante dress. In braided golden metal, laurel also crowns a head or emphasizes a drape, underlines the waist. Everywhere blows the spirit of nymphs and goddesses, gathered for the time of a dream and a contemporary floralia.

The silence of the statues is impressive, their immobility is grace.

An inexhaustible source of inspiration, the ancient world is also an encounter between sea and light, at the crossroads of past and present, always placing women at the heart of its veneration.

Everything in this AZZI & OSTA collection contributes to bring out, with immense respect and infinite tenderness, the natural strength of femineity.