Vogue USA - 09.2019

ALL LOOKS FROM BYBLOS FW 19/20 COLLECTION

“My design is a fusion of souls of different worlds.

Fashion has to be an expression woven from social and cultural fabrics

passing throught everything that is contemporary:

music, art and the simple act of having fun.”

Manuel Facchini.

Remaking Italy’s original contemporary brand, the Creative
Director and CEO looks to the brand’s founding ideas of color,
youth and sport as the modern blueprint to its future success.

Manuel Facchini is talking about the random and beautiful
molecular structures of glacial ice. He’s sitting in Byblos’

overlooking a steamy Milan day in the city’s Porta Nuova district.
Glaciers, and the crystal-clear purity in the colors they cast when
they refract light, together with the planet’s ultimate light show,
the Auroras Borealis, were the inspiration for the Fall Winter
2019 collection the designer sent down the runway. Intent on
contrasting this crystalline purity with the contaminated and
polluted reality of today’s world inside his second collection for
the brand, he tapped a plethora of sustainable materials.

Faux duck down pads jackets and parkas quilted in irregular
geometric shapes—styled on the captivating form of Artic ice

from recycled plastic bottles in transparent like bubbles on top.
Sharply cut origami gowns echo the idea of glacial ice melting

what’s happening around us, the message is not just the piece
itself but a vision created via this piece: its fabric, details and the
references,” Manuel Facchini says.

Ruminating on the world’s environment is not the only the
conversation Manuel Facchini wants to have with those who
wear his clothes. “I’m upbeat when I design, I like to put irony
and convey an idea of positivity inside.”

Sports, one of the creative visions of Byblos when it was founded

over four decades ago, is reintroduced in a contemporary, cool,

hi - tech and youthful way.

Manuel Facchini weaves its metamorphosis from being a

collections with playful fabrics and details.

hockey uniforms. Protective shields are built onto the shoulders

of recycled nylon bombers, and on the sides of a mini skirt. Cage

face masks inform the grid style lattice work on boots crafted

from eco-leather and sunglasses inspired by hockey goalkeeper

helmets. Winne Harlow closed the show in a body skimming

tulle dress that revealed three-dimensional protection appliquéd

silvery icy iridescent, molecular shapes.

For Manuel Facchini, who studied design at Central Saint

Martins, the signatures Byblos was built on—a curated eye for

color taken from the worlds of food and art, a sense of humor and

a fresh, youthful look—aren’t to be forgotten or recreated, but

exalted into new statements. Prior to being mesmerized by the

electrically charged Northern Lights, he infused the energy and

spirit of the Burning Man festival into a collection, a path far from

his birth town of Verona.

“Saint Martins school widened my perspective and perception, I

lost every single one of my points of reference and rebuilt them

again, it was an intense introspective focus on discovering who I

am and what I love to create.”