Boboutic

Interview with Boboutic

Boboutic is an Italian knitwear that has come together though Michel Bergamo's knitwear design expertise, Cristina Zamagni's creative experience as a architect/photographer and both their life experiences. They take everyday life and inject that into their knitwear that still holds up in terms of precise finishing and traditional knitting techniques. (Style Bubbule)

- Can you tell us a little bit about yourself as a fashion designer and your brand.

MICHEL: Boboutic starts in 2000 in collaboration with Cristina. Before that, I had already designed another collection called Atp and I had cooperated with some other Italian companies always working on knitwear.

I can't say that I've started thinking to work only on knitting, I grow up in a tailor's family and tissue would have been the easiest material to work with. But the fascination and the challenge of thinking to a dress starting from the yarn has been stronger than anything. So a complete knitwear collection (wardrobe) was the project to try. The overall became the symbol of this challenge, the universal object always present in all boboutic’s collections since.

CRISTINA: Boboutic has been my first experience in fashion design. I’m an architect but I’ve always worked as a visual artist. When I met Michel and he started talking to me about this project of a wardrobe in knitwear  I found it extremely interesting. It reminded me to the Adof Loos project, the architect who designed everything, from a house to a dress of whom was making him the commitment.

During the first boboutic collections my collaboration was very related on the image, on the geometries and on the taste: I would wear it…or I would never wear it...

- Can you tell us a little bit about the new Spring/Summer 2009, what were your initial concepts?

M&C: We find the theme of a collection while we work on it. It can start from an image, a conversation, or just from a comment. The next sprimg summer collection has found its base talking about the Oscar Shlemmer drafts, thinking about the deconstruction of the body through geometrical forms. Being knitwear a matter of geometry we have played with surfaces and volumes as well finding weights and shapes.

We needed a coherent material to the archetype image, so we have chosen a linen printed yarn (chambry effect) that we have made it painting in different jeans nuances, some super light crepe cottons  and some other cottons hands fresh and smooth touch.

- Regarding your A/W 2008-09 collection, can you tell us a little bit about the detail.

M&C: We were looking for a sculptural collection, that’s why we have worked a lot on the constructions of the shapes and the fitting, founding solutions with a system of folds and 3d effects. Always without any cut, processing everything directly on the machine or folding. The starting point: the futurist’s overalls.

- What is the most important facet to pay attention to in your designs?

M: What is important to me is the whole project and I work on the shape till this is not wearable, it is a continuous challenge and discovery.

C: To find always an image that corresponds us.

- Do you have any favourite materials and special techniques you enjoy using?

M: I like the crepe cotton for summer and do only decreasing knitwear.

C: I love ''le tricotage''.

- In the beginning, what actually made you get into designing?

M: When I was young I loved to have tailors hand made trousers or jackets, choosing different tissues and suggesting different cuts to whom was supposed to realize them. Probably because beautiful suits were too expensive for me and didn’t correspond completely to my personality.

It has been in that period that I really considered to start my fashion designer activity moving to Florence.

C: When I produce a photographic work for a gallery it’s not so different from producing a boboutic collection. in both cases it’s about (you deal with) delving into an argument that has fascinated you up to obtain the form which corresponds with your idea.

- How would you describe your style?

M&C: We are very aware about the cultural context that surrounds us and our style is a necessary consequence.

- What are your opinions on the current Europe fashion scenes?

M&C: Europe is a mosaic of regional identities. What I find interesting in Italian designers is the high quality of the realisation and production process, the capacity of the ''very well done''.

- Where is your favourite place to have relax or what are you doing dayoff?

M&C: During the meals at home, around the table with friends, or in my house in Lecce, with a Mediterranean garden, a kind of a monastery for us where finding relax.

- What are your career plans, do you have any future goals?

M&C: We have recently opened a new Boboutic Showroom: a place where we would love possible a good circulation of ideas.

- Do you have some words of wisdom for any young designers and our readers?

M&C: Being honest with himself, if it’s not a quality should be a practice.

Website : http://www.boboutic.com/index.php

Written by Toshimi Takaishi