ARNOLDO][BATTOIS
Handcrafted workings for dynamic architectures, volumes made in precious mat leather, color of the leather extended to accessories made of brass covered with glossy enamel: it’s a femininity that does not need to flaunt its complexity, it’s a softened, impalpable, light luxury.
Details of pleated clothes, in the memory of Vionnet and Mariano Fortuny, repeated and calibrated to give life to bags in soft mat nappa, weavings of flexible structures covered of a membrane in mat suede that defines the body shape, modulation of bellows in aniline calf to a new interpretation of classic saddlery, evocation of the primitive power of distant peoples in the bags in Tibetan goat.
Leitmotiv is the constant attention to details and careful search for innovative solutions: ships ropes that turn into soft interlace nappa for ergonomic handles, cutting and stitching are composed in a fluid dynamism, handmade workings allow to rediscover the taste of Italian crafted product.
Lizards, crabs and elephant made of brass leave the ancient Venetian doors turning into special closures or unusual attachments for handles: experimental varnishing allows them to merge with the nappa as clever chameleons.
Chromatic atmosphere inspired by the colors of the earth, Nordic wild and arid landscapes, expanses of Tundra with its infinite shades of mosses, in a range of colors that turns from brown to bordeaux, tuber and mustard in darker shades, with mineral notes of slate, cobalt blue and ruby.
Behind the label Arnoldo][Battois, there are two stylists from Venice: Silvano Arnoldo and Massimiliano Battois. A rich work experience (Mila Schön, Marzotto group, Scherrer, Cardin, Laura Biagiotti, René Caovilla...), flows into the long collaboration with Roberta di Camerino which was fundamental for their growth as professionals and for the discovery of a new passion: the bag accessory.
In 2001, armed with the professional experience acquired through various years of work, they took on the challenge to create clothing and accessories with their own label and to test their marketability by
opening a shop in Venice.
The clothing and accessories that they produced were made from a highly specialised craftsmanship from the Riviera of Brenta. They obtained a very positive reaction from the beginning, both from the national clients and especially the international clients, who appreciated the originality and quality of the materials and craftsmanship.
The work completed up until this point obtained optimal results, with the goods being distributed in prestigious stores as well as major international stores and with collection after collection earning main reviews in the sector, as the important insertion in “Percorsi di creatività 3” (“Fashion”, December 2004, LVMH) in Bag category.
In 2006, they were called to teach on the Design and Fashion degree course at the Faculty IUAV of Venice.
This course was headed by Maria Luisa Frisa: from 2006‐07, they held the laboratories for the design of Clothing and Accessories.
They participated in 'Who is on next?' 2010, international competition organized by Vogue Italy and AltaRoma, and they are inserted between the three finalists in the accessories category.
On September they showed SS 2011 collection during Milan Fashion Week, at the event organized by Vogue Italy and Vogue USA in Palazzo Morando, with the presence of Anna Wintour, Franca Sozzani and the most important names of fashion system.
Overall different but connected by detail: this is the aim searched in the creations of each Arnoldo][Battois collection, result of careful reflection on relationship between clothes and accessories in their mutual contamination.
Bags are enriched by drawing on the workings of haute couture, clothes are thought as architectures that contain a body: a new language to experience unexplored worlds.
Accessories like dresses, complex and autonomous architectures: it’s an open project, that attempts to distance from existing idea of the bag, that produces contaminations bringing together, in a unique time, the moments of history and sedimentation of thoughts; it’s a suspended time where everything is possible: it’s the memory, the remembrance, the future made of past and future. A never‐ending story,
never perfect, that is continually enriched by experiences to experiment forms, volumes and texture. Collections are born and developed in Venice, place of historical sedimentation and cultural contamination, where the glories of the Serenissima, Marco Polo’s travels and the lives of intellectuals and artists of the past still emerge in the contemporary look. City of indefinite, where everything is fragmented and reassembled under the same light, where past and present coexist in a dynamic equilibrium; it’s the Wunderkammer, which allows to rediscover the past to design the future.
