Wallpaper* & The Macallan Conversations
For the second part of its new Conversations series, The Macallan Single Malt Scotch Whisky and Wallpaper* meet Carlo Brandelli, designer, artist, menswear disruptor and former Savile Row Creative Director, who has now found a new vocation as a sculptor in Italy.
Designer Carlo Brandelli had always loved art and clothes so when he opened his first store, Squire, back in 1995 he conceived it as a contemporary art space that also sold men’s clothes (or maybe it was a clothing store that exhibited art on its walls?).
Breaking rules, challenging traditions
Squire’s central London location on Clifford Street – a West End thoroughfare that connected the boutique galleries of Cork Street and the bespoke tailoring houses of Savile Row – was critical. There was modern art at one end of the street, luxury tailoring at the other, with a young Carlo Brandelli in the middle of it all.
Many years later, circumstances, commitment, passion and gut feeling would inspire big calls to be made. Brandelli would make a bold, life-changing decision, giving up a successful career as a Creative Director and designer of men’s clothing in London to renew his passion for sculpture back in Italy. But not before he’d broken some rules, challenged traditions, and intelligently redefined the architecture of the man’s suit.
Art and the Artisan
Born and raised in North London by Italian parents, Brandelli’s world was imbued with sharp dressed men and elegant women; people who appreciated art, fashion, furniture and architecture, and who made beautiful things.
Acutely tuned in to design, aesthetics, colour, light, detail, taste and texture, the notion of creativity was all encompassing for the young Brandelli. ‘In London, there was art, and there was fashion, and there was design… and they didn’t mix,’ he says. ‘But I felt that they were all part of the same thing; creativity. And this just became part of the way that I viewed the world.’
With no formal training, and having failed – twice - to secure a place at Central Saint Martins, his career as a designer was fuelled by instinct and detail, and the crafts and techniques he’d observed as a boy.
‘I always wanted to be an artist, but the first materials that I picked up when I started to work happened to be the fabrics that were around me. I started to shape those objects, which turned into clothes.’
‘I always wanted to be an artist, but the first materials that I picked up when I started to work happened to be the fabrics that were around me. I started to shape those objects, which turned into clothes.’
Inspired by 1960s pop culture and the work of artists Allen Jones, Gerhard Richter and Bridget Riley, Brandelli conceptualised the Squire silhouette as a minimalist, modernist, anti-fashion statement; slim, monochromatic and sleek. With a client base that included Helmut Lang, Kate Moss, Alexander McQueen and various members of Massive Attack, Squire became the outfitter of choice for London’s burgeoning Cool Britannia culture.
Creative Distillation
Squire’s Savile Row neighbours were intrigued and, in 2003, Kilgour, French & Stanbury, one of London’s most respected bespoke tailoring houses who had dressed the likes of Fred Astaire, Robert Mitchum and Cary Grant, invited Brandelli to become its Creative Director, a role commonly found at French fashion houses but hitherto unheard of (and untested) on Savile Row.
Given carte blanche by his new employer to develop a contemporary menswear brand that combined the craft and heritage of Savile Row with all aspects of modern design, Brandelli embarked on a programme of creative reduction and sartorial distillation, stripping back and ripping out, redrawing lines and ruthlessly editing colour choices.
Suits were deconstructed and reconsidered, and unnecessary buttons jettisoned. The Savile Row store was redesigned to Brandelli’s strict specifications and intentionally oblique advertising campaigns, often bereft of actual items of clothing and shot by Brandelli’s friend and collaborator Nick Knight, were commissioned at great expense. Even the company name was trimmed from three words to just one; Kilgour. The stuffed shirts of the Row were quietly stunned.
‘The way I worked wasn’t the way that a fashion designer would work,’ says Brandelli. ‘Most people on Saville Row absolutely hated what I was doing.’ But both the critics and a new generation of Kilgour customers, such as Jude Law and Daniel Craig, clearly loved it. In 2005, Brandelli was voted Menswear Designer of the Year by the British Fashion Council.
‘I wanted to challenge the notion of what design meant to Savile Row’
Make the call
In 2009, Kilgour was suddenly sold, without consulting Brandelli, to a Dubai-based investor who wanted to undo what he had created and return to more formal, traditional tailoring. Brandelli clashed with the new owners over the brand’s direction and decided to resign, which left him facing a pivotal, career-defining moment.
‘At that point I wasn’t even sure whether I was going to continue doing fashion, or do art,’ he recalls. But with his heart ruling his head, passion overriding reason, Brandelli made the decision to give up his Savile Row showroom and turn instead to his artist’s atelier just outside Milan. Going from one medium to another, he admits, was both terrifying and thrilling, even though, in his own mind, the two worlds of fashion design and art had always been aesthetically synergetic and creatively collaborative. ‘When I was at Kilgour, I wanted to challenge the notion of what design meant to Savile Row, to build this idea of contemporary tailoring,’ he says. ‘But the references were always art and architecture. I stopped designing fashion because I felt that there wasn’t enough depth to what was happening in that world.” Working with glass, metal and stone instead of suiting and shirt fabric, Brandelli had more scope for full artistic expression.
‘It's not as if you can just stop. Even if no one is watching, it doesn't matter. You still have to do it.’
In 2011, several sculptures, made in collaboration with the American contemporary artist Matthew Brannon, were exhibited in New York and at London’s Frieze Art Fair. And in 2013, working with Italian glass specialist Murano, he produced several glass works, which were quickly acquired for a private collection. A second, more experimental series with Murano repurposed abandoned materials he found at the Murano factory in Venice.
The past 20 years of Brandelli’s career – across both fashion and art – all come from the same clear-eyed, carefully distilled mindset. ‘I’m just making art,’ he says. ‘Creative people have to work. It’s not as if you can just stop. Even if no one is watching, it doesn’t matter. You still have to do it.’
Whether he is designing a pair of trousers or sculpting a piece of stone, the work has to be pure. ‘There has to be a truth about what I’m doing, a set of feelings or ideas,’ he says. ‘There’ll be a little voice or a feeling inside the pit of my stomach. I’ll think, oh yes; that’s exactly as it should be.’
See The Macallan Conversations here.
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