For spring ’19, Aquazzura’s Edgardo Osorio has collaborated with BFF Racil Chalhoub on a capsule collection. He did the shoes and she the ready-to-wear. The duo spliced together archive floral prints with polka dots and Aquazzura stripes, creating playful summer dresses, shirts and skirts matched with heels and flats. Whimsical and fun, there’s even a pair of polka bunny ears on the back of Meghan Markle’s favorite Deneuve pump.
“We looked at pictures of the queen and thought how much we loved the way she matches everything,” said Chalhoub. Osorio also dubbed it Dolce Vita dressing. “Back in the day, you would match everything,” he said. “You’d take your clothes to your tailor and have shoes made in the same fabric as your dress. It’s so old-school, it feels cool again.”
Osorio’s wider spring ’19 collection riffed off glamorous summer locales like Italy’s Capri and Portofino, and Spain’s Ibiza. “Everything draws on different memories,” he said, citing a story involving pompom embroidery that was inspired by a trip to Morocco and fringing embellished with seashells that recalled holidays in Ibiza.
Yes, sunny climes are never far from mind at Aquazzura. Osorio revealed that he will launch a store in Brazil’s São Paulo in October closely followed by a second next year. For 2019, he also revealed that he will launch a series of capsules in different categories, “going into directions other than shoes,” he said cryptically.
For now, his new A sneaker has just dropped in stores. Inspired by a ’70s running shoe, it’s the opposite of an “it” sneaker, he said, adding that it felt “more sophisticated than what is out there right now.”
“They are too much,” he said of certain supersize styles on the market. “You see all these women running around in them, and they look like they’re skating. It’s not attractive.” Osorio does like to buck a trend. “When I started my brand, everything was about the exaggerated platform, but I came out and did three years of single soles,” he said.
But there’s one trend that he’s all over: women’s labels doing genderless collections or moving into the men’s market. Those sneakers are unisex, and the men’s versions are launching next year. Could this be the start of a wider Aquazzura men’s line? Watch this space.