If he hadn’t chosen a career in fashion, Albino Teodoro would have become an architect; this explains his penchant for sculpted, neat shapes with a couture-ish flair. Not surprisingly, his favorite designer is Cristóbal Balenciaga, who had a sublime talent for sumptuously unadorned silhouettes. At the opposite side of the designer’s inspiration spectrum is couturier Jean Patou’s quintessentially French style: feminine, seductive, a bit frivolous. Teodoro blended the two influences into Pre-Fall. “I worked on simple shapes,” he said. “Then I added a touch of sensuality and a youthful spirit, as if a girl were playing a grown-up woman.”
Fine-tuning Balenciaga-inspired contoured lines and softer feminine accents was actually an exercise that Teodoro handled rather smoothly. Cases in point were Prince of Wales–checked trapeze coats cut with precision, their round donut-shaped collars lined in a graceful shade of pale pink. In the same vein, a short cape-dress in black double cashmere had an elegant, sculptural flair yet looked fresh worn with bare legs and high-heeled pumps.
A lover of interior decoration and antique wallpapers, Teodoro found an archival William Morris–inspired floral pattern that he translated into the iris-print motifs gracing elongated feminine dresses and dusters in fluid crepe de Chine. A sensuous, frivolous feel was highlighted in the ruched sleeves of a see-through blouse in black plumetis. But the Balenciaga-esque severity somehow kept creeping in; a strict tailored suit was cut in a dry, stiff, grid-printed cotton call Vatican canvas, which is actually used for priests’ cassocks.
