Dimitar Dradi: a rising star in Italian haute couture and one of the most promising young talents on the international scene. Dimitar, or Dimi to his friends, discovered fashion as an eschatological path and as a way to flee from a difficult childhood. As is typical for true Artists, pain became his Muse. Suffering, introspection and true Art, brimming with mystical and symbolic value, dovetail in Dimitar’s style. The textiles, the weft, the composition, the subject are artistic elements in his creations just as much as watercolours, brushstrokes and scalpels are in paintings or in sculptures.In his works, Art assimilates his tools, and weaving itself becomes the subject, similarly to some of Jannis Kounellis’ evocative work, a great contemporary artist admired by our young Italian stylist.
The recent collection features about 20 clothes seemingly whispering, ‘wear me now!’ to its buyers (the designer wants all women to wear one of his garments), and took to the catwalk during the Milan Fashion Week in September. An unexpected runaway success… if you hadn’t already encountered his exceptional skills, that is. Dimitar Dradi’s style has always focused on a relentless pursuit of wonder: his newest line, ‘Pheromone’, is a visible testament to said quest. The cultural substratum associated with fear evolves, for want of a better word, into haute couture. Entomophobia (the terror and repulsion of insects) inspires a collection aiming to create wonder: a fresh look featuring new elements when compared to an homologated international landscape aspiring to blanket standards. Dradi’s choice to use terrifying shapes, more dreamlike than real, is a further unconscious confirmation of the eschatological process of inner ‘rebirth’ and his search for a definitive form expression. We also believe his choice symbolises the possibility of creating beauty from apparently repellent subjects. The reinterpretation of a taboo such as ‘disgust’ aims to accompany the observer and whoever wears Dradi’s fashion to overcome the superficiality and fear of whatever is ‘different’. The stylist stands out for the creative challenge he launches: dismantling – even forcefully, if it comes to that – one’s inner growth.
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