Like many designers, Antonio Azzuolo doesn't have a lot of time for "inspirations." "My experience inspires me," he said at his Spring presentation today. His experience is tailoring. And though that tailoring is often styled exotically at his presentations, his approach, he said, "is very pragmatic." Make a good jacket, sell a good jacket; the rest is set dressing.
For Spring, Azzuolo riffed on the wrapped styles he trotted out for Fall, creating a long, draped "vest"—a sleeveless robe, really—that, in his words, introduced movement into the traditional three-piece suit. Because Azzuolo's work is so fine and so costly, he's often at pains to undercut its preciousness. Here, he showed it with Nike sneakers, thumbed his nose at conventions of formalwear (sport shirts got tux-shirt bibs), and commissioned ultraexpensive French jacquards in acid-rave colors. But more effective, for business and for art, was the actual undercutting effected by the introduction of unstructured tailoring, which will bring his entry price point down to about half what it has been. That should help to ensure that his slow-going-but-still-growing roster of stores—which, as of Fall, includes Jeffrey and The Corner—continues to expand.
